Fraser's Magazine 1859-12: Vol 60 Iss 360

FRASER’S MAGAZINE,

DECEMBER, 1859.

THE NATIONAL DEFENCES.

OF our great national questions,
few were until late years con-
sidered more absolutely settled than
that of the liability of this country
to invasion. A virtual immunity
from this scourge for nearly eight
hundred years might well lull a
brave people, conscious of its
strength, into a sense of security.
Within that period, the efforts of
two great empires, each at the zenith
of its power and foremost in Europe,
had broken before the difficulties of
the attempt. The Spanish Armada
andthe preparations of Napoleon had
alike come to nought. What wonder,
then, if, after the destruction of all
the great navies of Europe during
the wars of the Revolution and the
Empire, the English people should
for the next half century at least
consider itself safe from any hostile
attempt upon its shores ?

In the midst of this security we
are suddenly called upon to consider
whether modern science, of which
we ourselves have been to the world
the practical expositors, has not
done more against us than for us
as regards this life-or-death mat-
ter. Strange, indeed, if it should
beso. May it not be fairly argued
that if the best engineers and the
best machinery belong to this coun-
try, and if the amount of its produc-
tions in each kind, personal and
material, be beyond measure greater
than any other nation can boast of,
modern inventions must rather help
to strengthen the foundations of our
Empire than lend a hand to pull it
down? Most true. Under the in-
fluence of science freely developed,
coupled with freedom of commerce
and that absolute personal free-
dom of which we are so justly
proud, the resources of this country

VOL. LX, NO. CCCLX.

have increased to an extent un-
paralleled in history. But there
is this difference between our doings
and those of the great military
nations of the Continent: our
labours are mostly commercial, the
result of individual enterprise, and
based upon a state of peace ; theirs
are more or less governmental, and
have habitually in view a state of
war. Thus, though lagging far
behind us in manufactures and
manufacturing power generally,
France is at this moment our equal
in naval steam machinery, and to a
formidable degree our superior in
the producing. power of her dock-
yards. It is true that after some
years of war our energies also would
take that direction, and our enor-
mous resources would in all proba-
bility give us, as heretofore, the
ultimate advantage. But the Cri-
mean war demonstrated that such a
change of direction in the energies
of an industrial people requires
time. All our past wars lead us to
a similar conclusion. We have in
nearly all cases been unprepared
at first, and only succeeded in the
end by reason of our great mercan-
tile and monetary resources.

We might be content to accept
this result as typical of our future
wars, could we be assured that this
want of instant preparation would
not some day soak to a catastrophe
for which no amount of previous
money-saving could be any compen-
sation. The advantages resulting
to the great Continental Powers at
the outbreak of war from the
maintenance of enormous arma-
ments are very dearly purchased at
the cost of national progress during
peace. But it may well be doubted
whether, in scliaeneenies of those

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644

armaments we have not gone too
much to the other extreme, and
whether we sufficiently realize our
position as now more than ever
continental in its character by the
virtual subjugation of winds and
waves which has been effected by
steam.

In the inquiry into the subject
before us, we must, once for all,
disclaim any animosity towards the
great nation which it unavoidably
concerns more than any other, any
doubt of its good faith towards us,
or any idea of Peg cert for this
country a greater degree of mari-
time supremacy than belongs to it
by the mere fact of its commercial
superiority. Our argument will be
throughout based on facts, not on
motives. We shall assume no more
than that in the complication of
European matters war may at any
moment overtake us ; that when the
appeal is made to arms, nations at
once take the side which seems
most to favour their immediate
security and interests; that we
might thus very possibly find our-
selves with our great neighbour as
an sets, and with no friend to
stand by us; nay, that we might
even find a coalition of maritime
States arrayed against us. The
question, then, how far our position
with respect to France, in the event
of war, would be altered by the new
agency introduced by modern
science, requires a very careful con-
sideration. There are some points
on which no doubt can exist, and
with these it will be best to begin.

It cannot be questioned that if
the command of the Channel were
secured by our present Allies for
any lengthened period, not only
would the passage of as many troops
as they had ships for be secured,
but also their communications would
be as rapid and as certain as if there
were no sea intervening. Now this
could not be said of any past epoch.
Not only have the best laid plans
been over and over again baffled by
contrary winds, even when the
command of the Channel was in the
enemy’s hands; but also it cannot
be doubted that the danger of
having the communications of the
invading army interrupted by the
violence of the winds and waves, as

The National Defences.

[ December,

well as by the opposition of our fleet,
must have been always a matter of
serious consideration, although per-
haps not of decisive importance.

K ext, it is capable of demonstra-
tion that should the enemy be con-
tent to invade us without regard for
his subsequent communications, his
means of doing so are vastly facili-
tated by steam. Instead of 1200
flat-bottomed boats, collected at a
single point which could be easily
watched, he would have the means
of embarking his troops in magni-
ficent steam frigates or steam tran-
sports, each carrying 2000 men,
besides horses and guns, from each
military port, with the certainty of
being able to unite them at any
given point and at any given time,
so soon as the attention of our fleet
should be for a moment, by acci-
dent or stratagem, withdrawn from
them. The passage from Cherbourg
to Torbay would be infinitely more
secure in such ships than that from
Boulogne to the coast of Kent in the
flotilla prepared by the first Napo-
leon. To many persons, indeed, it
may appear wild to suppose that an
invasion will ever take place for
which the invader had not previously
secured the absolute command of
the Channel. Doubtless he would
greatly desire to obtain such supe-
riority ; but we must recollect that
the first Napoleon stipulated for no
more than twenty-four hours to
enable him merely to effect his pas-
sage, and that he expressed the
utmost confidence both at the time
and subsequently that with 150,000
of such troops as soon after con-
quered at Ulm and Austerlitz, he
would speedily have reached Lon-
don and ‘cut the knot,’ as he
expressed it, ‘of all coalitions.’
That the conqueror of Europe
would have reached London, had
his great naval maneuvre been
successful, is indeed but too pro-
bable; that England would then
have sued for peace, we need not
believe; and that, on the contrary,
the English people would in the
end have shaken off their invaders,
we need not wound our national
pride by disputing. But this could
only have been effected by enor-
mous sacrifices, and after lengthened
sufferings. All that we are at pre-

1859. ] Alterations caused by the introduction of Steam.

sent concerned with, however, is
the fact that the first Napoleon was
fully prepared to invade this coun-
try without regard for his subsequent
communications, and this after the
fatal issue of the expedition to
Egypt, mainly arising from the loss
of communications; and that fora
bold, perhaps foolhardy, attack of
this kind, there are now far greater
facilities than in his day.

In other respects the introduction
of steam does not seem to have much
altered the conditions necessary for
the attack and defence which for-
merly existed. If the invading
force can leave its ports at any mo-
ment, so can also the fleets which
are to intercept it. If the French
possess railways for the transport of
their troops to the coast, we possess
them in far greater abundance. The
nee of the electric telegraph
are at least equally bestowed on
both sides. We have omitted, how-
ever, to mention a point noticed by
General Shaw Kennedy in his valu-
able Notes on the Defences of Great
Britain and Ireland, namely, the
difficulty of effecting naval Viesh-
ades, by reason of the necessity of
keeping the steam line of battle
ships at all times fully coaled. But
perhaps when we consider the many
occasions on which, in former wars,
blockades were forcibly raised, and
the enemy’s squadrons set free,
whether by storms which com-
pelled the blockading ships to take
the open sea, or by sudden concen-
trations of the enemy’s fleets, we
shall not be disposed to attribute
too great force to this additional
disadvantage under which our navy,
if strong enough to blockade, would
undoubtedly labour. The alterna-
tive the General proposes is to keep
the British fleets in the most con-
venient ports on our coast, and
entrust the duty of watching the
——— fleets to light and swift
vessels, and to telegraphic commu-
nication with the Channel Islands.

_Nor must we forget to men-
tion the advantage which the
electric telegraph would give to the
invading party in enabling him to
time exactly the departure of tran-
sports and covering squadrons from
each port, so as to arrive simulta-
neously at their rendezvous, wher-

645

ever the point of assembly might be
fixed. The telegraph is thus prin-
cipally in favour of the party which
has the initiative, although doubtless
it is also a strong arm in the
defence.

The main advantage, therefore,
gained by our neighbours from the
introduction of steam, appears to
consist in the power of sending
their ships to sea at any favourable
moment, independent of wind or
weather. They can, in fact, take
advantage of any circumstances that
may befriend them. The uncertainty
of the operation is reduced to that
arising hon the opposition of our
fleets. That opposition overcome
or eluded, the passage of the
enemy's army, without @ moment's
delay, is assured.

Professor Creasy has, in an inte-
resting work on The Invasions of .
England, summed up the occasions
in which wind and weather played
a principal part in the success or
failure of the expeditions. He ob-
serves—

When the Normans attacked England
the winds aided the invader, first, by
compulsorily delaying his voyage till
the English fleet had left its port; and
secondly, by blowing in his favour at
the very crisis when the English King
and his army were absent in the north
of the island. On that occasion Eng-
land was conquered.. But when Charles
VI. designed to repeat the exploit of the
Norman Conqueror over us, and when
England lay almost defenceless before
him, the northern gale blew steadily
against our foes, until, in weariness and
fatigue, they abandoned their armament
against us, At the ever memorable
epoch of the Spanish Armada the Eng-
lish nation gratefully acknowledged how
much their preservation was due to the
tempest, that first delayed the enemy off
Cape Finisterre, and gave this country
time to complete her defences; to the
state of the weather when the Spanish
fleet was in the Channel (being emi-
nently advantageous to the tactics of
the English); and to the storms which
completed the Armada’s destruction.
Afterwards, when Louis XIV. threat-
ened us with invasion from La Hogue
and Cherbourg, the strong north-western
wind that fora month cooped the French
squadrons in Brest and hefort, and
kept Tourville inactive while Russell
collected our ships, certainly preserved
us from a devastating ae on our

UU:

646

coasts, and a grievous civil war in Eng-
land, if not from Jacobite conquest. At
a later period, the expedition which
Alberoni sent to reinstate our Tarquin,
was shattered by the tempest off Cape
Finisterre, without having inflicted on
the English the loss of a single drop of
blood. Still later, the storm which
drove Hoche from the Irish coast, when
all our fleets had failed to bar his pas-
sage, saved us from the loss at least of
the greater part of Ireland for a time,
and from a disastrously costly struggle
to regain it; for Hoche assuredly would
have ventured the disembarkation in
Bantry Bay, which Grouchy flinched
from effecting.

These instances certainly show
how signally this country has been
preserved hitherto, at the moments
of its greatest perils, by an over-
ruling Reoddense. Had the event
in several of these cases been dif-
ferent, we should probably not hold
the rank we now hold in the world;
civil and religious liberty would

erhaps have been unknown in
ar and in the absence of

liberty European civilization might
have slumbered on for centuries.
But although the same merciful
Providence will, as we humbly trust,
— us again as it has done

itherto, it would be madness in us
not to recognise that the main in-
strument of our preservation has
been the sea wherewith we are
girded, and the baffling winds to
which fleets in the olden time were
subject, and that these obstacles to
invasion scarcely exist as such in
these days of ocean steam naviga-
tion.

Whether the enormously in-
creased calibre of naval artillery,
and the introduction of shell guns
—both of which must greatly reduce
the duration of naval actions—will
be more against us than for us, it is
difficult to determine. It would
seem, however, that the result of
battles at sea will depend more
upon gunnery, and what we may

erhaps term military strategy, and
ess upon seamanship than formerly ;
and if this be so, the change cannot
be said to be in our favour.

A similar doubt exists at this
moment in regard to iron-plated
shot-proof ships. It is indeed
hardly yet established whether they
can be made absolutely proof against

The National Defences.

[December,

the effects of rifled cannon; still
less whether they will be good sea-
boats. But as soon as both these
problems are solved, as solved they
no doubt some day will be, it is
painfully evident that the Channel
will be more ‘ bridged’ than ever.
In any case, we must build iron-
plated ships at least as fast as our
neighbours, or we may find before
long that they have obtained such a
start as to have the game henceforth
in their hands. The coincidence of
the attack upon Austria with the
French invention of rifled cannon
ought to teach us a lesson in this
respect.

Naval warfare is evidently in a
transitional state, and it is hardly
probable that the extent of the
modifications which steam, heavy
ordnance, shell , and enormous
tonnage, have effected in it will be
really understood before the experi-
ence of the next naval campaign.
This very uncertainty, however,
ought to be to us a sufficient reason
for ceasing to put absolute confi-
dence in our fleets to protect us
from invasion. For instance, it is
ng that after a short action

oth the opposing fleets would be
so damaged as to be obliged to re-
tire to their harbours; a similar
fate might befal the frigates and
gunboats, and the sea campaign as
such be thus indecisive. But the
way would then be cleared for the
steam transports, and nothing but
the difficulties of landing, such as
they are, would intervene between
us and our invaders. Indecisive
naval operations, therefore, in which
both sides suffered severely, and of
course, still more strongly, unsuc-
cessful naval operations, should our
enemies outreach us in naval stra-
tegy, would at once expose us to
their armies.

We may be tempted to think,
however, that the enormous amount
of sea transport that would be re-
quired for such a body of troops as
could hope to invade England with
success, and also the obstacles and
delays of the landing, would still
render such an attempt, if not prac-
tically impossible, at least dificult
and dangerous in the extreme. We
must be careful, however, not to
under-rate the talent of the French

1859.]

Staff, and the extraordinary faculty
for organization possessed by our
neighbours in every department.
But without travelling out of the
experience of our own navy, Gene-
ral Kennedy shows that there is no
great difficulty in conveying troops
or a short passage at the rate of one
man per ton ; and that consequently
sixty frigates or transports, averag-
ing two thousand tons, would con-
vey 120,000 men. The Rhadaman-
thus, a paddle steam vessel of 880
tons, conveyed 1100 troops at one
time from Oviedo to St. Sebastian,
a distance of 180 geographical
miles; and the Salamander, a
paddle steamer of the same tonnage,
conveyed repeatedly 1000 men, and
on one occasion 1100 men, from St.
André to Passages, a distance of
110 geographical miles. It is fur-
ther stated that during the Crimean
war the Vulcan, a frigate-built ship
of 1760 tons, conveyed 1250 troops
from Malta to Gallipoli, and on one
occasion had 1100 French soldiers
on board for nearly a month; and
that she could easily have taken
2000 men for a short voyage with-
out in any way impairing their
efficiency. Now, although it is im-
probable that in a naval war France
could afford to lend her frigates for
such a purpose, it is well known
that she is yearly increasing her
transport service, each new tran-
sport being capable of conveying
2000 men, 150 horses, and some
guns; and seventy-two such tran-
sports being intended to be built
before 1871. Every year is also
now adding to the number of mer-
cantile ocean steamers, and it is
probable that in a few years there
will be scarcely an ocean-going ship
under a thousand tons or without a
screw propeller. Every suchsteamer
built in French private yards, or
liable to be slosed at the disposal of

rance during war, provides her
with the means of throwing an ad-
ditional thousand or two thousand
men on our shores. This aspect of
the matter does not seem to have
been sufficiently considered. It is
a danger increasing year by year,
yet so gradually, so noiselessly, so
m accordance with the inevitable
course of things, that we are apt not
to notice it. But the fact remains,

Practicability of the Passage and of Landing.

647

and its importance may excuse us
for repeating it—that precisely in
proportion as sailing ships of small
tonnage are giving place to capa-
cious ocean steamers, so is the
power multiplied of transporting
troops in large masses tu any point
of our coasts.

Next with respect to the difficul-
ties and delays of the landing. It
will at once be admitted that to at-
tempt to draw a cordon round our
coasts by means of batteries, mar-
tello towers, or any such device, is
futile. A hundred thousand men,
with their proportion of rifled artil-
lery and riflemen, are not to be
stopped by such means; and the
cordon once penetrated, is hence-
forth worse than useless, for the
several works comprising it keep a
considerable body of men_ idly

uarding them, who could be far
etter employed elsewhere. The
possession also of such a line of de-
fence, weak as it is, is sure to lead
to the neglect of better means of
resistance; unless, indeed, every
mile of accessible beach on our
coasts could be swept by a battery of
twenty guns of the heaviest calibre,
manned by expert artillerymen, and
rendered secure from escalade, such
a plan would be about the weakest,
as it would probably be the most
expensive, that could be adopted.
he idea of fortifying every point
of our extended coast-line being
then abandoned, the only obstacles
that would remain to the success of
the landing would be the opposition
of the local force on the spot, or the
attack of the British Channel fleet,
aided by gunboats whose special
métier would be the destruction of
the transports. ‘

With regard to the opposition of
any local force, even if aided by a
heavy field battery, we need not say
much. The landing of a large body
of men would take place at several
points at once within easy commu-
nication of each other; and a suc-
cessful landing effected at one point
all the others are turned, and the
landing of the whole is accomplished.

With regard to the attack of our
fleet we must observe, that if twenty-
four hours only were let pass before
our fleets were in junction, the land-
ing could be safely effected. The

648

disembarkation of the British and
French forces in the Crimea occu-
pied but a day, although the pre-
parations of boats, rafts, and steam-
tugs for landing were miserably in-
complete. That army consisted, it
is true, of only 50,000 men ; but, as
General Kennedy argues, it is ob-
vious that three times that number,
at different points, sufficiently con-
tiguous to one another for mutual
communication, could land in the
same period. And we cannot doubt
that any transport fleets proceeding
fresh from French dockyards would
be abundantly furnished with the
means of effecting an almost instan-
taneous landing. In fact, this is
only a question of means. It will
be said, however, that our fleet
would be singularly inactive to allow
twenty-four hours to pass without
attacking such an armada; but on
the other hand, it must be remem-
bered that the French fleets would
be, as is supposed, in junction
(having obtained the start and ef-
fected their concentration at some
preconcerted point), while ours
would require time to concentrate
in sufficient force for the attack.
However, we are ready to admit

that such an oe would scarcely

be made until the British fleets were
either decoyed away to some distant
point, or forced to their ports for
repairs in consequence of an inde-
cisive or unsuccessful action, or
unless they were greatly inferior in
strength to their opponents.

Having pointed out the changes
which have been effected by steam
in the relative military position of
the two countries, let us now see to
what extent the British and French
naval administrations have respec-
tively responded to the new demands
to which this condition of things has
given rise.

We must premise by observing
that in the Ten time—i.e., up to
the date of the introduction of steam
into modern navies, say up to 1840
—the number of British ships-of the
line and frigates was about double
that of the French. The fact that
steamers were to be eventually the
principal, if not the sole agents in
naval warfare, appears to have been
first appreciated in this country;
for in 1852, while the French had

The National Defences.

[ December,

but two steam line-of-battle ships,
we had seventeen. But at the close
of the preceding year a new power
had been inaugurated in France by
a strong coup-d'état, and a new era
dawned on the Imperial navy.
From 1852 to December, 18538,
France added to her steam navy by
building or converting thirty-eight
steam liners, while England in the
same time added only thirty-three,
thus bringing up the navies to forty
French and fifty English screw line-
of-battle ships. Of steam frigates,
France, in December, 1858, possessed
forty-six against only thirty-four
(besides nine screw blockships of
sixty guns) English. In steam cor-
vettes and sloops andscrew gunboats,
however, we have greatly the supe-
riority, the numbers of each class
being eighty-two and a hundred and
sixty-two English, against twenty-
two and twenty-eight French.
When we consider the large de-
duction for colonial service that
must be made from these numbers,
considered as available for opera-
tions in the Channel and Mediter-
ranean, it will be painfully evident
that, with the exception of the
smaller vessels and gunboats, we
should be no more than equal to
France alone at the outbreak of
war; and if Russia were joined
against us, we should be considerably
inferior. We are far from under-
rating the value of the gunboats,
on the contrary, they would be in-
valuable as our second line, and
having the special duty of watching
the enemy’s transports; but as the
first part of the great naval problem
must certainly depend upon the
screw liners, 1t is evident that we
must go on building until we have
a safe superiority in this respect.
We have not adverted to the
armour-clad ships which both na-
tions are now assaying to construct.
Our neighbours seem to desire to
be beforehand with us in this respect,
and it is reported that several iron-
cased gunboats, as well as some larger
frigates, are now building. If so, we
must follow and even take from them
the lead, whatever may be the cost.
One observation, however, may not
be here out of place. The damage
which is most feared in future naval
combats is that arising from shells

1859.]}

either entering and bursting in the
side of the ship, or passing through
and bursting ieee decks. The
inroads of solid shot are not so much
to be dreaded; at any rate, what a
Nelson, and—we will add with sin-
cere respect and regret for a loss
which may be truly called national—
what a Lyons did not fear, will not
cause an exaggerated alarm to our
future naval commanders. Let,
then, a series of careful experiments
be made on the exact thickness of
iron which will protect the sides of
a ship from shells alone. It will not
probably be one-half, perhaps not
one-third, of that required to resist
solid shot, and the difficulty of
sufficiently protecting ships without
rendering them unfit for sea by their
excessive weight may possibly be
surmounted.

However, it is not, after all, in the
number, nor in the defensive armour
of our ships, that our most alarming
deficiency now exists: it is, as every-
body knows, in the power of man-
ning them on an emergency. To
state the case in the words of a
former First Lord of the Admi-
ralty :

We stand at a great disadvantage
with regard to other nations, so far as
the immediate manning of our navy is
concerned, because, while ours is a
voluntary service, other nations can by
their system of compulsory service put
on board their fleets in a very short
time a number of men much larger than
we could hope to bring together by our
volunteer system. I have no doubt,
however, that if time be allowed, in the
course of two years we should not have
the slightest difficulty in adding to our
navy as many men as might be required;
but it is when the emergency arises that
the difficulty is felt. What we want is,
not that that number of men should be
put on board at the end of two years,
but in two months, or in two weeks.
Russia and France can do that. Their
system of compulsory service enables
them almost immediately to make up
great navies.—Speech of Sir Charles
Wood, 18th May, 1857.

__ Here, then, is our difficulty. An
illustration of the truth of the above
remarks, which we believe to be au-
thentic, has been afforded this very
year. At the outbreak of the Italian
war there was general alarm in
Europe, in which this country na-

Question of Manning the Navy.

649

turally shared, and a proclamation
was issued offering bounties for the
enrolment of t0,c00 seamen. It re-
quired months to collect this small
levy, and when collected, they were
of course raw as men-of-war’s men,
and wholly untrained to gunnery or
naval drill. On the British Govern-
ment taking this step, that of France
did the same; but in this case the
10,000 additional seamen were in
the French ports awaiting embarka-
tion within a fortnight.

How this difficulty is to be mas-
tered is perhaps the most important
question of the present day to this
country, as it is certainly one of the
most difficult. The Royal Commis-
sion on the subject came to appa-
rently the only rational conclusion.
In its number of seamen the British
merchant navy exceeds in the pro-

rtion of about five to two that of

rance, the numbers registered re-
spectively being, for France, 90,217,
for England, 227,411. Here, then,
is a reserve of which the Commis-
sion propose we should largely avail
ourselves; but to carry out this re-
commendation is no easy matter.
Independently of the physical diffi-
culty of a very large number being
scattered over the globe on every
ocean, there is, it would appear, &
difficulty of another kind—in the
disfavour with which the Royal
navy is regarded by a large portion
of our maritime population. They
view it, not as it is, but as it was.
The old traditions survive of its
hardships and its severities, and even
among those who know better the
prejudice remains. It is not im-
possible that we are at this moment
suffering from the moral effects of
pressgangs half a century ago. Be
this as it may, the difficulty appears
extreme of getting at the class in
question at all—of finding out as a
body their real motives. As im-
pressment and, at present at least,
compulsory local service of any kind
are out of the question, there is
nothing for it but to pay down.
To this all are agreed, and the prin-
ciple has been months ago sanctioned
by Parliament; but the conditions
for entering the naval reserve have
only recently been announced.
We presume the delay has been
caused by the difficulty of aseer-

650

taining the exact amount which
would bring in the volunteers with-
out being too costly, and by the
necessity of great caution in framing
the regulations, so. that while on the
one hand the volunteers of the mer-
chant navy may receive a tangible
recompense for their services, on
the other the continuous service
A.B., who is our real bulwark, may
not be discouraged. We are bound
to say that the mean appears to
have been struck ve fairly. The
terms, though liberal, are reason-
able, and are certainly such as
ought to procure us the force we
require.

t the experiment, then, of a
Volunteer Naval Reserve be tried
by all means, and let no small con-
siderations of economy interfere
with its success. Thirty thousand
trained men thus held in readiness
at short notice, being chiefly em-
ployed in the coasting trade and
the European seas, would be a fair
counterpoise to the Inscription
Maritime. If indeed this fail, the
only alternative would seem to be
an Inscription Maritime of our
own in the shape of a Naval Militia
Ballot ; for a reserve we must have
at all hazards. There would mani-
festly be nothing unconstitutional
in such a measure. It has always
been recognised that the State has
a right to the services of every able-
bodied man for the national defence ;
and it cannot be questioned that in
an insular position like ours the
sovereign can justly call upon every
seaman to take his share of that
defence on his peculiar element.
Accordingly, in ancient days the
seaports were required to furnish
both ships and men for that purpose;
and the Spanish Armada was mainly
opposed by ships and sailors thus
raised. uch a measure would
doubtless be unjust, unless accom-
panied by a ballot of the land
militia at the same time. There
would also, of course, be certain
limits set to the employment of
seamen thus raised, but we appre-
hend this would merely amount to
an engagement not to station them
permanently beyond the European
seas,

This precautionary measure, whe-
ther it prove in the end to be a

The National Defences.

[ December,

Volunteer Naval Reserve,or a Naval
Militia made voluntary as far as
possible, but with the deficiency
supplied by the ballot, is un-
doubtedly the first step towards

lacing us on a par with our neigh-

ur in the power he possesses of
improvising a fine fleet by means of
his Inscription Maritime. Other
subsidiary measures need be very
briefly referred to. The large ex-
tension which has been proposed of
the system of training-ships for
boys, seems excellent in every re-
spect. By this means we shall ob-
tain the very best sailors, and it
will be an admirable outlet for the
youth even of the midland parts of
the country, who will thus have the
royal navy opened to them as well
as to their brethren in the maritime
towns. It would hardly seem, in-
deed, that too great extension could
be given to this measure.

We need add little on this part
of our subject, save to press the
importance of a force which appears
specially adapted to the new de-
scription of naval warfare of
which steam gives promise. We
allude, of course, to the Royal
Marines, perhaps the finest troops
in the whole military service of this
country; and being at the same
time trained to aid the seamen in
their deck duties, and to man the
guns, they seem peculiarly fitted to
fill up the void caused by the dearth
of seamen for the royal navy, more
especially as the corps is popular
and easily recruited. We would
wish to see not less than 25,000 of
these excellent troops in hand. In
peace they would garrison the naval
arsenals; and, in order to extend
the knowledge of their ship duties
throughout the force, they would
be drafted for short periods on
board the Channel and Mediterra-
nean fleets, gunboats, &c.

We must now turn to the force
necessary for resisting invasion on
shore. e may premise that an
invasion of such a country as Eng-
land would not be attempted with
less than 150,00omen. It has been
shown that after either an inde-
cisive action or aseries of operations
which would oblige both fleets to
bear up for their respective ports
for repairs, or still more after an

1859.]

action in which we were unsuccess-
ful, the steam-transports conveying
the invading army might put to sea.
It has been also shown to be pos-
sible to land an army under cover
of a protecting fleet, before the
naval operations have had time to
commence. We will assume, then,
that 150,000 men, with provisions
and stores for one month’s con-
sumption, have succeeded in effect-
ing their landing. What force then
could we hope to oppose to them P

We will begin with the force
which in the opinion of a very com-
petent judge, General Shaw Ken-
nedy, we ought to have.

The general plan of defence which
we suggest is as follows :—To have as
volunteers and local militia a force of
300,000 men for Great Britain, of which
120,000 should be destined for the de-
fence of London, and 120,000 for the
defence of Plymouth, Portsmouth,
Dover, Sheerness, Chatham, and Wool-
wich.

And that for the defence of those
seven places, that is, London, Wool-
wich, Chatham, Sheerness, Dover,
Portsmouth, and Plymouth, they should
each be surrounded with detached works
at about one mile distant from each
other, of masonry; and each work of
such strength as to require a regular
attack, supported by heavy ordnance,
for its reduction.

In addition to these defensive means,
that there should be always in Great
Britain 50,000 regular troops, and
50,000 embodied regular militia.

The force for Ireland might be 25,000
regular troops, and 25,000 embodied
regular militia,

With regard to the local militia,
General Kennedy appears to think
that one week in the year would
suffice to keep them in a state of
mee training. He would

ve this, as well as the regular or
embodied militia force, raised as far
as possible by voluntary enrolment,
but the deficiency supplied by the
ballot. The 75,000 men proposed
for the ‘regular militia force’ would
be maintained in whole or in part
only, according to the aspect of
political affairs, but be kept at the
full number ‘ when there were seri-
ous apprehensions of our being led
into any important war; and when
apprehension of invasion existed,
the Government should have the

General Shaw Kennedy’s Plan of Defence.

651

ower to call out 100,000 additional
ocal militia.’—p. 51.

By these arrangements, therefore, a
power would exist, in the event of in-
vasion, of calling out an organized force
of 550,000 men, in addition to pen-
sioners, constabulary, dockyard corps,
and the marines that might be on shore ;
—that is, about 600,000 men, in addi-
tion to such a naval force as will ensure
a complete naval superiority.

These figures may well startle
the British tax-payer; yet we be-
lieve it to be as cheap a mode of
defence as has ever been proposed.
The only alternative, of maintaining
a standing army in England of
equal strength with any army of
invasion that could be brought
against it—that is to say, an army
of 150,000 or 200,000 men, is too
alien to our institutions to be
thought of, and would besides be
infinitely more expensive. We
must now say a few words on each
of these descriptions of force.

General Kennedy, it will be ob-
served, fixes 75,000 as the least
number of regular troops that
ought to be at any moment in the
United Kingdom. He also pro-
poses an equal number of embodied
militia when war is apprehended,
but admits that this force should
vary with the political exigencies of
the times. e may, however,
safely assume that at least one-
third would always be under arms ;
which would give, therefore, as the

ermanent garrison of the United

ingdom in peace, a force of 100,000
men. Now, if this force is to be
permanently maintained, it will
surely be better to have it consist
entirely of the regular army, and to
discontinue at once the practice of
embodying regiments of militia per-
manently during peace, to which
there exist grave objections. On
the apprehension of war, 50,000
regular militia would be embodied,
and being combined with double
their number of regular troops,
would soon be serviceable.

How to obtain out of our
busy population 100,000 men for
home service, together with 80,000
men for India, and 40,000 for the
colonies, is indeed a serious ques-
tion. The number would be con-
sidered exceedingly moderate in

652

Continental States in proportion
to the whole population, being
only one in fifteen of the male popu-
lation between eighteen and forty
years of age; but in*the present
prosperous state of our labour
market it is questionable whether,
constituted as our army is, and with
strong national prejudices against
the profession of the soldier, we
could obtain the numbers. It be-
comes, then, a matter of very seri-
ous consideration whether the army,
as a profession, could not be so im-
proved as to become popular. This,
it appears to us, can only be done by
making it an inviting service in
itself, and a certain road to comfort
and respectability for the well con-
ducted. We are ready to admit all
the good that has been done-in the
way of libraries and schools, and
for the comfort of the soldier in
every way. The recent order of
his Royal Highness the Commander-
in-Chief, which practically abolishes
flogging, except in cases of extreme
flagrancy, and then only after the
culprit has been previously degraded
from the class declared exempt from
such punishment, will no doubt go far
to improve the position of the soldier
both morally and socially. Lastly,
the facilities which soldiers of good
character now have for obtaining
situations after discharge, must re-
act eventually in favour of the pro-
fession. Still we believe that much
more may be done to better the
condition of the soldier; and that
this, if for no other reason than
that of getting a sufficient .supply
of men, ought to engage the serious
attention of the Government.

In the first place, we question
whether, according to present prices
of labour, the pay of the soldier is
sufficient. We will leave, however,
this question with theexpression only
of a hope that it may be thoroughly
considered next session.

Next, that certainly appears a
severe service in which a man may
be, and frequently is, twelve or
fourteen years abroad withouta pos-
sibility of being relieved. The idea of
expatriation is not pleasant even to
the emigrant, with his visions un-
bounded of a golden future. How
must it then appear to the soldier
who is embarking for India or some

The National Defences.

[ December,

distant colony, where he expects to
spend the best years of his life in a
dull monotony of military duty?
Thousands indeed go, never to re-
turn. Now there is certainly little
in all this to make the military an
attractive profession, and indeed
the plain fact is, that it is the re-
verse of attractive to all the more
respectable part of our population.

e believe, however, that com-
plicated as the subject is with the
difficulty of providing for our
colonial service, a partial remedy
at least might be found. The
length of the colonial service of
regiments has been already reduced
from about twenty years to ten or
twelve ; and we believe that means
might be found of reducing it still
further without any sensible in-
crease to the expense. But how-
ever this be, the impolicy of keep-
ing individual soldiers of a regi-
ment for so long a period in colonial,
perhaps tropical service, is unques-
tionable. The remedy we would
suggest for consideration, is to allow
every soldier who has attained a
certain length of service, to return
home, and complete his period to-
wards discharge or pension in an
army of reserve. The exact length
of service necessary for this purpose
could be readily ascertained from
military statistics, and would, of
course, depend on the numbers to
be maintained in the reserve. To
render the service popular, the
soldiers of the reserve army ought
to be allowed lengthened furloughs,
in order to enable them to take
work, but without diminishing their
pay on that account. The country
would at the same time gain the
priceless benefit of a large body of
veteran soldiers formed in one
corps d’armée; in fact, an ‘old
guard.’

Nor must we omit to mention
other points regarding theunwilling-
ness of the population to enter the
army. There is one great fact which
cannot be too seriously considered ;
namely, that the ranks of the arm
are practically closed to the middle
classes. Individuals of this class
cannot be officers, constituted as
our army is at present, and they
would think it derogatory to enter
the ranks as private soldiers. The

1859.]

army thus loses altogether the in-
telligence and energy of the classes
which virtually govern the country.

It loses also, of course, very seri-
ously, in the number of its recruits.
Weare notdisposed, indeed, to be by
any means democratic in our treat-
ment of the army. An army that is
strictly professional, that is to say,in
which both officers and men, and
especially the former, have nothing
tolook forward to but the advantages
that may be derived from a suc-
cessful career, is certainly a formid-
able instrument to wield against an
enemy ; but history shows also that
it may be often wielded with equal
success against the liberties of its
country. It may be quite possible,
however, to encourage the introduc-
tion of a reasonable amount of the
_ middle-class element into the army,
without compromising the aristocra-
tic character, if we may be permitted
the expression, which now belongs to
it. The condition of the higher class
of non-commissioned officer might
be advantageously raised. A much
larger proportion than at present of
commissions without purchase might
be given t6 deserving non-commis-
sioned officers, in some cases as the
reward of good service alone, but,
asa general rule, granted only upon
their attainments being satisfactorily
tested byan appropriate professional
and general examination. We are
persuaded that the announcement
of a measure of this kind would in
time fill the ranks of the army with
well-educated and well-conducted
youths, ambitious of distinction,
and energetic in placing themselves
by their exertions in a position to
obtain it. Opposition, no doubt,
it would meet with ; but, it may be
asked, is this the time in which the
whole middle orders of society, con-
stituting as they do the bone andmar-
row of the country,can be safely shut
out from their place in its defence P

These questions, and many others,
will require the most careful and ear-
nest consideration of the Government
and Legislature in the next Session.
We must be prepared to take our
part in the great European crisis
that seems to be approaching, and
whether our influence be exerted
physically, or only morally, it must
equally repose on the military and

The Militia.

653

naval strength we can show in its
support. The celebrated question
of the Great Duke,—How is the
King’s Government to be carried
on?P—seems now convertible into
another not less important; How
are the Queen’s navy and army to
be manned ?

We come next to the question of
the militia. Of this force, as we
have seen, General Kennedy pro-
poses to embody 75,000 whenever
war is apprehended, in addition to
300,000 local militia, which would
be raised to 400,000 in case of in-
vasion. Where volunteering for
the militia fails, he would resort to
the ballot. This brings us to the
exceedingly difficult question, whe-
ther compulsory service of any kind,
before the fact of actual invasion,
is any longer practicable in this
country. The following evidence
of Lord Grey on the subject, before
the Militia Commission, certainly
deserves serious consideration.

Q. 6208. Would your Lordship an-
ticipate applying the ballot in a time of
emergency and of very great necessity ¢

I believe that the ballot, in the pre-
sent state of feeling, and in the present
condition of this country, is almost im-
possible, it is so radically unjust. I
had occasion, when in the War Office,
to look very closely into the operation
of the ballot during the French war,
and I know that it was the opinion of
all those whose judgment was most to
be relied upon in the War Office, that
even during that great war the ballot
had failed. You are aware that during
the last three or four years of that war
the ballot was not used ; it was found
to interfere so much with the other re-
cruiting, that it was far better to raise
men by recruiting. In point of fact, at
the time when the ballot was used, I
think that nearly ninety per cent. of the
men who served were substitutes ; that
is to say, they were raised by bounty,
consequently the ballot was merely a
system of raising the bounty by a poll-
tax, which is the most unjust of all
taxes, instead of by a general system of
taxation.

Q. 6209. But you think that it would
be right to keep the ballot in the event
of an invasion ?

I do not think that in this country
any force is necessary. I think that
the people are quite ready to defend
their country. Ifyou have the ballot,
I think that it should be ballot without
substitutes, and I ask how you think

654

that men would submit to that in this
country ?

These observations express pre-
cisely and very powerfully what
must be admitted to be grave ob-
jections to a ballot for the militia.
Still we strongly doubt, first,
whether the general argument is
altogether sound; and secondly,
whether, even if sound, the national
necessities ought not to over-ride it.

For example, it is hardly fair to
draw an inference applicable to the
present period, from one widely
different from it in every possible
circumstance. At the close of the
great wars of the Revolution and
the Empire, the whole habit and
feeling of the country had become
warlike; and it is easy to under-
stand that when the militia was
fairly manned, the Government was
glad to drop so obnoxious a prac-
tice as a ballot for compulsory ser-
vice. We must also recollect that
at that period of the war there was
no longer a question of invasion at

The service for which recruits
were really wanted was not the
militia, but the army, fighting in
Spain, avd in every spot on the
coast of the Continent where, ac-
cording to the desultory and most
unmilitary modes of warfare that
prevailed, an English: force might
set its foot. The question now with
us is, how, during peace, a force
can be raised sufficiently numerous,
and formidable by its discipline
and training, to meet some of the
first troops of the world. And if
the voluntary mode fail, we see no-
thing for it but a compulsory service
to fillthe gap. No one doubts that
the English people are quite ready
to defend their country. But if no

ersuasion can induce them to come
orward in sufficient numbers be-
fore the invasion occurs, it will be
too late for any undisciplined levies
such as they would then be, to
avert from the country the most
terrible disaster.

Still, we are ready to admit that
no expedient should be left untried
to raise the militia to a respectable
force by voluntary enlistment. It
is to be regretted that the late
commission on the militia were
limited to the consideration of its
military efficiency when formed;

The National Defences.

[ December,

and the real question at issue, how
to provide for its numerical efli-
ciency, remains still to be investi-
gated.

The third force on which General
Kennedy would rely is the ‘ local
militia ;’ aforce which we possessed
in the revolutionary war, but which
no longer exists. As their name
imports, the members of this force
would, except on actual invasion, re-
main in their counties. They would
receive a less degree of training than
the regular militia, being only called
out for a week in each year. On
the threat of invasion they would
be embodied. In ordinary times,
being called out for so short a
period, this force would not, though
consisting of 300,000 men, be ex-

ensive. Its annual cost General
ennedy estimates at only
£230,770.

There cannot be a doubt that this
would be a most powerful reserve.
In the course of a year or two the
men would have learned the use of
their arms and a few easy move-
ments, and would be far more
readily converted into soldiers than
the peasant or artisan who has never
had a firearm in his hand. The men
not being calledaway for long periods
from their ordinary work, nor in
any case but that of actual danger
to the country from invasion kept

ermanently embodied, would vo-
otene for such a force much more
freely than for the regular militia,
which has now come naturally to
be regarded rather as a portion of
the regular army limited to home
service, than as a temporary service
to be combined with the ordinary
business of life.

To give us some idea of the actual
values of these descriptions of force
so far as regards rifle training,
we have the evidence of Major-
General Hay, than whom no one
has done a more useful service to
the army, by the successful organi-
zation of the School of Musketry
at Hythe.

Q. 3681. In what space of time do
you think that a lad from the plough
could be made efficient enough for
the purpose of going through the
musketry instructions?—The course
now adopted in the line, and, in fact,
throughout the army generally, is, to

1859.]

take such men when they have been
about a month or six weeks under the
Adjutant’s drill, They get into our
mill, as it were, and they are trained for
eighteen days, during which time we
put them through the whole of what we
call our ordinary training. After the
man has gone through that ordinary
training as a recruit, he is then allowed
to practise as a soldier in his company,
when it merely takes twelve days in
the year to go through the prescribed
annual course of musketry drill and
practice, and two or three such courses
make those men most wonderfully effi-
cient.

Q. 3682. Do you mean to say six
weeks after the recruit has joined !—In
war time we do not give him so much,
for in a fortnight after a recruit has
joined we should bring him under rifle
training.—(Zvidence before the Commis-
sion on the Militia.)

The facts here stated afford a
basis on which to legislate as re-
gards the militia, and as far as pos-
sible every other force. In two
months a soldier may be taught a
reasonable amount of drill, and a
very perfect course of rifle instruc-
tion. This undergone, twelve days
in each subsequent year for rifle
instruction and practice, and we

-"T presume sixteen days for drill
and field movements, or twenty-
eight days in each year, would be
ample to enable the soldier of
militia to keep up his knowledge.

It is very possible that these
periods might be divided, the period
for rifle instruction and practice
being separated from that for the
preliminary drill; and we see no
reason why, with a permanent staff
of militia such as we now possess,
any man should be withdrawn from
his avocations for more than a fort-
night at a time. Thus one of the
most common objections to enter-
ing the militia would be removed.
The training of the local militia
would of course be far less com-
plete. But they would at least be
organized, equipped, and armed,
and in two or three years would
have some knowledge of drill and
the use of the rifle.

We are scarcely in a position yet
to estimate the full value of the
volunteer movement. It promises,
however, to become a most efficient
auxiliary in the national defence.

The Volunteer Movement.

655

It is of the utmost consequence
that a rifleman should be of a higher
order of intelligence than the mere
soldier, inasmuch as he is thrown
much more upon his own resources.
How far this fact is appreciated
at the Hythe School of Musketry,
will be seen from the following
statement of Major-General Hay,
whose evidence we have already had
occasion to quote. He states :—
Our system of giving prizes for good
shooting is entirely based upon intelli-
gence. A man does not get a prize for
being a “marksman,’ because he is a
good shot, or because he is a good
judge of distance ; he must be both ;
but there is another condition which he
must fulfil, he must be an intelligent
man ; he must be able to answer you in
an intelligent way any question which
you may put to him upon the subject of
the efficiency of his gun ; he must be
able to tell you the flight of his ball,
and the effect which it will have upon
cavalry or infantry at all its ranges; he
must answer you in an intelligent way,
otherwise it would not be worth the
country’s while to pay that man.—
(Evidence before the Commission on the
Militia).
Now, a large body of riflemen,
consisting of volunteers from the
upper and middle classes of the
country, seems precisely the corps
that will answer this primary con-
dition of intelligence. We cannot
doubt for a moment their efficiency,
if well handled. There must be
good preliminary training, and good
rifle practice. Although in general
they would work in companies only,
or even subdivisions (and for the
actual rifle instruction it is essen-
tial there should only be a small
number at a time), it would be
necessary, whenever brought to-
gether in large bodies, as in the
event of invasion would be the case,
to form them into battalions. It
would of course be rash to defer
this till the war should break out,
and therefore we hope to see the
commanders of battalions named as
soon as the organization is suf-
ficiently complete. They should be
chosen with great care; they should
be spirited and dashing, and it
would not be a bad arrangement to
insist on their having gone through
some sort of training at Aldershot,
by being attached to regular rifle

656

corps. It is also very desirable
that by their rank in their counties
they should command the respect
both of officers and men. Finally,
we must have a general to com-
mand these irregular but formidable
bands. Here we are indeed at a
loss for a suggestion. Who will
present us with a Garibaldi ?

As a matter of small but not un-
important detail, we may suggest
for the consideration of rifle
corps committees the propriety of
supplying their volunteers with the
precise articles of equipment they
would require for campaigning, that
is to say, knapsacks and their con-
tents, and haversacks. They should
not wait for the moment of action
to take this necessary step. There
would be then quite confusion
enough, without the aggravation of
a deficiency of equipment. It need
hardly be said that no force could
remain a week in the field, espe-
cially in a cold and damp climate,
without being properly furnished in
this respect.

We have next to consider the
state of our fortifications, and the
réle they would probably play in a
war of invasion. As all the world
knows, these are confined to the
protection of our dockyards. Not
a singleinland fortress or entrenched
camp do we ess. Take now
Portsmouth. It consists of a great
naval anchorage and a dockyard on
the largest scale, under the protec-
tion of both land and sea defences.
The fortifications, which are at pre-
sent undergoing the scrutiny of the
Defence Commission, we will not
speak of, but proceed at once to the
position Portsmouth would be called
upon to oceupy in the scheme of
national defence, should a forei
army ever obtain a footing in the
country.

Portsmouth, with Plymouth, and

erhaps Portland, would evidently
the base of our naval operations
against the enemy’s communications
with his own country. If our fleet
should be inferior, or worsted,
Portsmouth should have the means
within itself both of refitting the
old, and fitting out new fleets.
It is evident also that it should
have the means of arming and
supplying the fleet with ammu-

The National Defences.

[ December,

nition. In fact, it is indispensable
that Portsmouth and uate
should be naval arsenals as well as
naval stations and dockyards, since
if dependent, as at present, upon
Woolwich, a French army on land-
ing would at once cut them off
from their source of supply. This
is a most important point; for as
long as we should be able to con-
tinue our naval operations in the
Channel, so long there would be
hope of destroymg the invading
army. But allow our fleets to come
to a standstill from inanition while
those of the enemy are well sup-
plied, and the command of the
Channel falls entirely into his hands,
The question would be then resolved
into one of armies alone, and it
is easy to see what must be the
result.

Next, is it right that in case of
invasion our army should from the
outset be altogether en /’air? that
it should possess not a single forti-
fied place in the interior for the
safe deposit of its stores, for the
assembly of its recruits, for a pivot
of its strategical operations, and
upon which to retreat in case of
need? With an enemy in the
country greatly superior in num-
bers to our disciplined force,
to gain time would be every-
thing for us, while delay would he
fatal to him. In two or three
months our force would double
anything he could possibly land,
and with good leadership and good
organization they would be fairly
drilled and disciplined, and in a
state tormeet their enemy in the
field. But this would be impossible
if there were nothing to arrest his
progress in the meantime. His
columns would march through the
length and breadth of the land, and
there would not be a spot, short of
Wales or the highlands of Scotland,
on which our regular or disciplined
troops (supposed, of course, to be
greatly inferior in numbers) could
find a secure halting place in which
to collect, arm, and train the
thousands of volunteers who would
flock to the national standards.

An inland fortress, entrenched
camp, or whatever the Government
= decide upon for this purpose,
is therefore indispensable. The only

1859.]

tion that remains is, where
ought it to be?

General Kennedy answers this
question for us very quickly. He
bids us fortify London.

We do not doubt that were such
a proposition made to Parliament
by the First Minister of the Crown,
the House, as well as the great
British publie, would stand aghast
at its boldness, or laugh at what
would be termed its extravagance.
But let us consider for a moment
what it would effect for us. Com-
bined with placing our dockyards
in a thorough state of defence
(about which there can be no ques-
tion), and with an efficient organi-
zation of militia and volunteers,
General Kennedy considers that it
would set us as absolutely free from
danger as the nature of the case
will admit of.

If (he observes) you reduce all in-
vading forces of this country to the
certainty that they cannot enter London,
nor enter or destroy any of the arsenals,
and that even if they succeed for a
time in possessing themselves of some
of the open towns, they must speedily
be obliged to surrender as prisoners of
war or be destroyed, enough will have
been done to deter any enemy in his
senses from putting foot on these shores.

This position we believe to be
correct. The possession of the
dockyards (being also arsenals)
assuring to us the power of con-
tinuing, during the invasion, our
naval operations in the Channel,
by which the enemy’s communica-
tions would be continually en-
dangered, and perhaps destroyed,
and London being at the same time
secured against all attacks, the
rincipal object of the enemy would
e@ eam from his reach, and
the danger of the attempt would
probably ensure its never being
made. But the question at once
arises, is it possible or practicable
to fortify a town of such vast ex-
tent as London is, and, if practi-
cable, would such a place be, after
all, defensible P

As a question of military engi-
neering alone, there can be no doubt
that it is practicable—not exactly
to fortify such a place as London,
that is to say, to surround it with a
continuous rampart and ditch, but—

Question of Fortifying London. 657

so to surround it with detached
works as to entirely sweep with the
fire of artillery the ground between
such forts, and practically to debar
all access. For this purpose the
forts would average about a mile
apart from one another. Their sites
would naturally be selected with a
view to take the utmost advantage
of the ground, but their general
distance from Charing-cross might
be from five to seven miles. The
distance from the centre of London
ought in fact, in these days of long
range guns, to be rarely under six
miles, which would give a circum-
ference of about thirty-six miles.
General Kennedy makes the circum-
ference about thirty miles, taking in
Hammersmith, Wormwood Scrubs,
Willesden-green, Hampstead, High-
gate, Tottenham, the River Lea till
its junction with the Thames, Dept-
ford, Lewisham, Sydenham, Upper
Norwood, Lower Streatham, and
Wandsworth. On this circuit he
would place about thirty forts ; but
as Woolwich must necessarily be
taken into the defence, nine addi-
tional forts would be required for
that purpose. Taking as a guide
the cost of a fort now in progress at
Gosport, estimated at £80,000, the
General assumes the average cost
per fort, including the purchase of
the ground, at £100,000; and con-
sequently the cost of the thirty-nine
forts required for the defence of
London and Woolwichat£3,900,000.
We are inclined to think, for the
reason before given, that a longer
radius must be taken, and our esti-
mate would raise the number of
forts around London to thirty-six ;
and, including Woolwich, to forty-
eight, entailing an expenditure of
£4,800,000.

The forts would be armed with
very heavy artillery. The inter-
mediate spaces would be occupied
by troops, who would intrench them-
selves in the best positions. Each
fort is estimated to mount 40 guns,
with a garrison of 500 men, and the
intermediate spaces to be manned
by divisions of 5000 men. But as
the enemy could not dream of in-
vesting London in its entire circum-
ference, a large portion of the troops
would be withdrawn from the loca-
lities not immediately exposed, and

658

nwo on the part of the position
ronting the enemy. A better posi-
tion could not be imagined for
militia and newly raised levies, who,
aided by regular troops, would gra-
dually be brought to face their
enemy in daily skirmishes, while
the guns of the forts would prevent
their being ever very severely
punished for their audacity: re-
sources of every kind would be in
abundance, for it is well known there
is no base of operations like that
afforded by a large city, containing,
as it does, every possible trade;
after some bold attempts to capture
or penetrate the spaces between the
forts, the enemy would probably
have to retire, and the defending
army being now strong, his days
would be numbered.

Whether London, thus fortified,
would be really defensible, would
depend, we conceive, more on the
fedling of its population than on the
military advantage of such a posi-
tion. . Would a _ population of
2,500,000 endure the suspense and
terror consequent on the approach
of an invading army, and the explo-
sions of shells day and night, with
which its suburbs at least would be
visited? That is the question. No
one can predict its solution, which
would depend almost entirely on the
spirit with which Londoners them-
selves would man their works and
swell the numbers of the militia and
volunteers. Citizens, as history tells
us, will endure much when their
fathers, sons, and brothers are num-
bered among their defenders.

As a question, then, of military
engineering and of strategy, General
Kennedy’s plan appears perfectly
adapted to the circumstances of the
case. We cannot maintain a large
standing army; therefore we must
place our small disciplined force,
with the numerous levies that would
speedily join it, in an unassailable
position for a time, until the whole
strength of the country can be or-
ganized. As London would un-
doubtedly be the chief object of the
expedition, no position seems so well
fitted for the purpose as that around
the metropolis. In fact, the diffi-
culty presented to the enemy would
be so great, that it is very impro-
bable he would ever, under such

The National Defences.

[ December,

circumstances, undertake +he expe-
dition, unless indeed he reckoned on
the terrors of the metropolis as a
means to overcome its garrison and
es army —a speculation,
1owever, as we conceive, highly
dangerous.

But we must admit that, notwith-
standing the military reasons in
favour of such a project, the social
and political obstacles are very
great, probably insurmountable.
They can at any rate be only over-
come by a decisive manifestation of
public opinion in favour of so strong
a defensive measure. Wealthy citi-
zens and noble lords would be re-
quired to accept the State compen-
sation for the property on which the
forts were built; they would be
further informed that on the ap-
proach of the enemy all buildings
within a thousand yards of the works
would have to be destroyed—a cir-
cumstance that would diminish the
value of their property in proportion
to the mama apprehension of in-
vasion. Again, in the political view
England would proclaim to the world
that she is, militarily speaking, no
longer insular, and it is impossible
to say to what extent this feeling
might not in process of time affect
our institutions. We do not indeed
set great store by this latter argu-
ment; for in fortifying our dock-
yards so carefully as we are now
doing on the land side, what do we
but proclaim to the world that we
are liable to the attack of an enemy's
army. And his army once landed,
to attack an arsenal or to march on
the metropolis is a mere question
with him of policy or strategy.
Each course may be equally open to
him. Still, it cannot be denied that
to surround London with heavy
armed forts would be to express the
awkward fact abovementioned more
tangibly, if not more really.

Our space warns us that we must
here leave this part of our subject;
but we cannot do so without repro-
ducing the opinions of two great
men which have been often quoted,
and yet cannot be too frequently
repeated—those, namely, of Mr. Pitt
and of Napoleon—on this most im-
portant phase of the question.

It is in vain (observes Mr. Pitt) to
say you should not fortify London be-

1859.]

cause our ancestors did not fortify it,
wnless you can show that they were in the
same situation as we are. We might as
well be told that because our ancestors
fought with arrows and lances, we ought
to use them now, and consider shields
and corslets as affording a secure defence
against musketry and artillery. If the
fortification of the capital can add to the
security of the country, I think it ought
to bedone. If, by the erection of works
such as I am recommending, you can
delay the progress of the enemy for three
days, it may make the difference between
the safety and destruction of the capital.
It will not, Iadmit, make the difference
between the conquest and independence
of the country, for that will not depend
upon one or upon ten battles; but it
makes the difference between the loss of
thousands of lives, with misery, havoc,
and devastation spread over the country
on the one hand, or the confounding the
efforts and chastising the insolence of
the enemy on the other.

Then, for the opinion of Napoleon,
we have the authority of Montholon
in the St. Helena Memoirs :

Napoleon says he frequently turned
in his mind the propriety of fortifying
Paris and Lyons; and this in an especial
manner occurred to him on the occasion of
his return from the campaign of Auster-
litz. Fear of exciting alarm among the
inhabitants, and the events which suc-
ceeded each other with such astonishing
rapidity, prevented him from carrying
his designs into execution. He thought
that a great capital is the country of the
flower of the nation, that it is the centre
of opinion, the general depét ; and that
it is the greatest of all contradictions to
leave a point of such importance with-
out the means of immediate defence.
At the season of great national disasters,
empires frequently stand in need of
soldiers ; but men are never wanting for
internal defence if a place be provided
where their energies can be brought into
action. Fifty thousand National Guards,
with three thousand gunners, will defend
a fortified capital against an‘army of
three hundred thousand men. The same
fifty thousand men in the open field, if
they are not experienced soldiers com-
manded by skilled officers, will be thrown
into confusion by the charge of a few
thousand horse. Paris, ten times in its
former history, owed its safety to its
walls. If, in 1814, it had possessed a
citadel capable of holding out for only
eight days, the destinies of the world
would have been changed. If, in 1805,
Vienna had been fortified, the battle of

Necessity for a Fortified Arsenal.

Ulm would not have decided the war ;
if, in 1806, Berlin had been fortified, the
army beaten at Jena might have rallied
there till the Russian army advanced to
its relief ; if, in 1808, Madrid had been
fortified, the French army, after the
victories of Espenosa, Tudela, and
Somosierra, could never have ventured
to march upon that capital, leaving the
English army in the neighbourhood of
Salamanca in its rear.*

Whatever may be the national
decision with respect to fortifying
London, there can be no question
that we require some position in the
interior of the country to be pre-
pared beforehand, which should be
a pivot of operations for the defend-
ing force, and also contain its chief
arsenal. Woolwich, being at pre-
sent our only arsenal, and works
existing and in progress there being
on a gigantic scale, as befitting the
military centre of an Empire, would
seem to be the spot proper to be at
once selected for strong fortifica-
tions, embracing an entrenched
camp for at least 50,000 men. We
fear, however, that great difficulties
would be found in placing it ina
state of defence ; but on this point
we shall hope to see before long the
ee of the Defence Commission,
if, as we trust, their instructions in-
clude the consideration of this ques-
tion. At all events what is abso-
lutely required is, a fortified camp
and arsenal somewhere ; otherwise
the defending army would be ex
l'air, and, its present arsenal once
in the hands of the enemy, it is
difficult to see how the army, de-
prived of its supplies of material
and ammunition, could continue the
contest for a week.

We confess to having rather a
multiplicity of objects in view in
this discussion. In the first place,
we believe that a failure in our
present attempts at defensive prepa-
ration would be highly dangerous,
as challenging a powerful enemy to
humiliate us;—it would, indeed, have
been far better not to have made
the attempt; for then our love of
peace @ tout prix might at least be
treated with some consideration.
Next, nothing will tend so much to
our security from all attempts at in-
vasion, as being in a high state of

* See Alison’s History of Europe, Chapter xxxvii.

VOL, LX. NO. CCCLX.

xx

660

preparation for it: we believe, in-
deed, that there are few things
the Emperor of the French would
more desire than to be furnished
with a good excuse to his army
and his people for declining the
undertaking. Again, while desiring
above all things to see the great
mass of our population, and espe-
cially of the upper and middle-
classes, trained to the use of arms,
we would wish it could be better
seen—what the lessons of all history
tend to show—that regular troops
must be mainly withstood by regular
troops; and that the people of this
country must be prepared to forego
their ancient prejudice against. a
standing army. Not that we would
emulate in this respect the great
military despotisms of the Continent
—that we could not do if we would—
but we ought at least to provide
that not more than one-half of the
force with which we should meet
the enemy should be aught but
regular troops. Zhen the militia
and volunteers would be invaluable.
Equally beneficial would be the
local militia as a reserve, already
equipped -and armed, and in the
course of two or three months
ready with the rest of the regular
army and embodied militia to meet
any troops in the field. Not less
anxious must we be to see the réle
to be played by our fortifications
well considered and prepared before-
hand; to see our naval fortresses
made independent of all support
from the interior of the country,
from which they would be cut off’;
in short, to see them converted into
naval arsenals, as well as being, as at
present, royal dockyards; lastly,
we desire to see some base of ope-
rations prepared for our army,
militia, and volunteers, which would
at once be their retreat in case of
disaster; unassailable while they
should be gathering up for a

The Nationai Defences.

(December,

renewed struggle; a depdt on
the largest scale of military stores
and equipment of every kind, and
an arsenal for the fabrication of
every kind of arm, and for the sup-
ly of ammunition. Whether
ndon, or Woolwich, or some other
well-selected position (perhaps the
vicinity of Birmingham would pre-
sent peculiar advantages) may be
chosen, the choice of some such
fortified position appears to us in-
dispensable, otherwise our army
would be en /’air, and the capture
of its present undefended arsenal
would deprive it of all means of
prolonging the contest.

These questions, and many others
canoe with our subject, will
doubtless occupy the serious atten-
tion of our Legislature in the next
session. We cannot conceive a
more patriotic resolution on the
part of any Englishman at the pre-
sent juncture than that of endea-
vouring, by careful study and re-
flection, to make up his mind on
this vital matter. If such conside-
ration of the question could but
become general, we should have a
strong public opinion ready to sup-
port the Government and Legisla-
ture in the most decisive measures
they could propose. If public
opinion is weak and vapid, and not
interested in the subject, the action
of Government will be proportion-
ally feeble and desultory. In short,
we believe that never in the course
of its history has the English people
held its destinies, under Providence,
more in its own hands than at this
moment; and it will depend upon
our use of the means with which
that Providence has most bounti-
fully provided us, whether, in the
trying times that seem to be ap-
proaching, we shall continue to pre-
serve the honour of our country
as intact as we have received it from
those who have gone —— us.

E. A.

Ke eee aX >
4) wesegs

Awe forty years since a little
boy, the son of a colliery engine-
man at Killingworth, dressed in a
suit of homely grey stuff cut out by
his father, was accustomed to ride
to Newcastle daily upon a donkey,
for the purpose of attending school
there. Years passed, and the bo
became the man known to world-
wide fame as Robert Stephenson,
the engineer. He died, and on the
14th of October last he was laid to
rest in Westminster Abbey, side by
side with the departed Kings,
statesmen, and great men of his
country.

It is but ten years since the re-
mains of George Stephenson, the
father, were quietly interred in a
small church on the outskirts of the
town of Chesterfield, followed to
the grave principally by his own
work-people. The event excited
little interest beyond the bounds of
that secluded locality. Yet George
Stephenson, thus obscurely buried,
was the inventor of the passenger
locomotive, and the founder of the
now gigantic railway system of
England and of the world; and it
is only within the last few years
that the public have learnt from his
biography how great a man then

assed from the earth. But the
onours which George Stephenson
failed to receive during his life and
at his death, and which, in the
strength of his self-dependence, he
would have been the last to seek,
have at length not unworthily been
reflected upon his eminently meri-
torious son; and those who here-
after read his tablet and contem-
plate his monument in Westminster
Abbey, will probably not fail to re-
member that Robert Stephenson
was himself one of the best products
of his great father’s manly affection,
* his noble character, and his inde-
fatigable industry.

As the son of : ae Stephenson,
Robert was emphatically well-born.
Every reader now knows the story of
the father’s life—his early encounter
with poverty and difficulty, his
strenuous endeavours after self-
education, his determination to gain
‘insight’ into all the details of his

661

ROBERT STEPHENSON.
En semoriam.

business, his patience, his bravery,
his self-discipline, and self-reliance.
But greatest of all was his manly
love for his only son, and his reso-
lution, formed almost as soon as the
boy was born, and steadily acted
out in his life, that no labour, nor
pains, nor self-denial should be
spared to furnish him with the best
education that it was in his power
to bestow. His own words on the
subject are memorable:—‘In the
earlier period of my career,’ said he,
‘when Robert was a little boy, I
saw how deficient I was in educa-
tion, and I made up my mind that
he should not labour under the same
defect, but that I would put him to
a good school, and give him a libe-
ral training. I was, however, a poor
man, and how do you think I
managed? I betook myself to
mending my neighbours’ clocks and
watches at nights, after my daily
labour was done, and thus I pro-
cured the means of educating my

son.’

The father moreover taught the
boy to work with him, and trained
him as it were to educate himself.
When a little fellow not big enough
to reach so high as to put a clock-
head on, his father would make him
mount a chair for the purpose; and
to ‘ help father’ became the proudest
work which the boy then, and ever
after, could take part in. This daily
and unceasing example of industry
and application, working on before
the boy’s eyes in the person of a
loving and beloved father, imprinted
itself deeply upon his mind, in
characters never to be effaced. A
spirit of self-improvement took pos-
session of him, which continued to
influence him through life; and to
the close of his career he was proud
to confess that, if his success had
been great, it was mainly to the ex-
ample and training of his father
that he owed it.

When Robert went to Mr. Bruce’s
school at Newcastle, he was a rough,
unpolished country lad, speaking
the broad dialect of the pitmen;
and the other boys would tease him
occasionally, for the purpose of pro-
voking an outburst of his Killing-
xx

662

worth Doric. But he was kindly of
disposition, and a diligent pupil;
Mr. Bruce frequently holding him
up to the laggards of the school as
an example of good conduct and in-
dustry. He was accustomed to
spend much of his spare time at the
rooms of the Literary and Philo-
sophical Institute; and when he
went home in the evenings he would
recount to his father the results of
his reading. Sometimes he was
allowed to take to Killingworth a
volume of the Repertory of Arts
and Sciences, which the father and
son studied together, George laying
great stress upon his son’s being
able to read and understand the
plans and diagrams without refe-
rence to the written descriptions.
Sometimes they tried chemical ex-
> a wena together, assisted by
igham, a neighbouring farmer's
son; and occasionally Robert ex-
erimented on his own account, as,
or instance, upon the cows in Wig-
ham’s enclosure, which he electrified
by means of his electric kite, mak-
ing them run about the field with
their tails on end, and on another
occasion upon his father’s Galloway
when standing at the cottage door,
nearly knocking the pony down by
the smartness of the shock.
George was about this time occu-
ae with the invention of his safety
amp, and Robert was present and
assisted in making many of the ex-
erry upon the fire-damp
rought from the Killingworth pits.
On one occasion George was en-
gaged in experimenting by means
of a gasometer and glass receivers
borrowed from the Newcastle Insti-
tute; Nicholas Wood being ap-
— to turn the cocks, and
bert to time the experiment.
The flame being observed to descend
in the tube, the word was given to
turn the cock, but unfortunately
Wood turned it the wrong way;
the gas exploded, and the apparatus
was blown to pieces, though fortu-
nately no one was hurt. At other
times, Robert was engaged in em-
bodying in a practical shape the
drawings of machines and instru-
ments which he found described in
the books he read; amongst other
things, constructing a theodolite
spirit-level, on which he engraved
the words, ‘Robert Stephenson,

Robert Stephenson.

[December,

JSecit. Another of his works, while
he was still at Bruce’s school, was
the sun-dial, the joint work of father
and son, constructed after much
study and labour, and eventuall
fixed over the cottage door at Kil
lingworth, where it is still to be
seen. Not long since Mr. Stephen-
son visited the place with some
friends, and pointed out the very
desk in the little room of the cot-
tage at which he had studied the
lan of the dial and calculated the
titude of his village.

The youth leftschool well grounded
in the ordinary branches of educa-
tion, and an adept in arithmetic,
geography, and algebra. In his
after life, he with good reason at-
tached much importance to the
thorough training in mathematics
which he received at Bruce’s school,
and considered that it had been the
foundation of much of his success
as an engineer in the higher walks
of the profession. His father at first
destined him for the business of a
coal miner, and with that object ap-
prenticed him to Nicholas Wood,
then chief viewer at Killingworth.
While thus engaged, Robert ac-
quired a familiarity with under-
ground work, which afterwards

roved of much value to him; and
in the evenings, after the day’s work
was over, he pursued his studies in
mechanics under the eye of his
father, who had by this time been
advanced to the post of chief engine-
wright of the colliery.

The Killingworth locomotive was
now in full work, and Robert be-
came familiar with its every detail.
The possible adaptation of the en-
gine to more important uses than
the hauling of coal to the shipping
a the improvement of the steam

last (employed in all the engines
constructed by Stephenson subse-
quent to the year 1815), and the

enlargement of the heating surface,
so as to produce a more rapid sup-
ply of steam, formed the subject of
repeated evening discussions in the
cottage of the Stephensons. Of
the two, the youth was at that time
by much the most sanguine, his
father ‘holding him back’ by set-
ting up all manner of objections for
him to answer, and thus in the
most effectual way cultivating his
faculties and stimulating his inven-

:
1
c
a
8
n

=

1859.]

tiveness. It was a happy time for
both, full of discipline, co-operation,
self-improvement, and steadily ad-
vancing mechanical ability.

The father, however, was not
satisfied with the knowledge which
his son might thus laboriously ac-
quire by studying in company with
himselfat Killingworth. Hewasfully
conscious of hisown wantof scientific
knowledge, which had hampered
him at every stage of his career.
Above all things, he desired that
Robert should be well grounded in
the principles of natural science ;
for which purpose he felt it would
be necessary to place him under
disciplined teachers. He resolved
accordingly, to send Robert to
Edinburgh University, where he
spent the winter and summer ses-
sions of 1820-1, attending the classes
of Natural Philosophy under Sir
John Leslie; Mineralogy. under Pro-
fessor Jamieson, and Chemistry
under Dr. Hope. Young Stephen-
son was one of the most diligent
and hard-working students of his
year. He took copious notes of all
the lectures, which he was accus-
tomed carefully to write out, and
afterwards to consult even to the
close of his life. One evening, a
few years ago, an engineering friend
was discussing with him in his
library in Gloucester-square some
scientific point, when Mr. Stephen-
son rose, and took down from the
shelves a thick volume, for the pur-
pose of consulting it. On the ques-
tion being asked, ‘ What have we
here ?’ he replied, ‘When I went
to college, I knew the difficulty my
father had in collecting money to
send me there; before going I
studied short-hand, and while at
Edinburgh I took down verbatim
every lecture I attended; eve
evening before I went to bed
transcribed those lectures word for
word, and you see the result in
that range of books.’

It was a good custom of Profes-
sor Jamieson, at the close of each
session, to select the most diligent
and meritorious of his pupils to
accompany him in a botanical and
geological excursion over some of
the most interesting parts of Scot-
land; and Robert Stephenson was
one of these favoured pupils at the
close of the session of 1820-1. Only

His Education and Early Life. 663

about a year before his death, when
he was making an excursion in his
yacht with a party of friends through
the Caledonian Canal, he took oc-
casion to point out some of the

ound which he had gone over dur-
ing that delightful excursion with
his professor, and he then expressed
the practical advantages which
he had derived from studying the
great works of the Creator upon
the chart of Nature itself. The
students’ excursion ended, Robert
returned to Killingworth ; and his
father was a proud man when his
son reported the progress he had
made, and, above all, when he laid
before him the prize for mathe-
matics which he had won at the
University. The cost of the year’s
education was about eighty pounds ;
but though a large sum in the
estimation of both father and son
at the time, George then and after-
wards declared that it was one of
the best investments of money which
he had ever made.

We have been thus particular in
describing the several stages in the
education of Robert Stephenson,
and the active part which his father
took in the process, because it was
thus that the foundations of his
character were laid. The young
man was now to enter by himself
upon the road of life, fortified b
good example, his habits well trained,
his faculties well disciplined, and
fully conscious that the issue rested
mainly with himself. For several
years more, however, he remained
under his father’s eye, passing
through the admirable discipline
of the workshop, to which he him-
self in after years was accustomed
to attach the greatest importance.
At the meeting of Mechanical Engi-
neers, held at Newcastle, in August,
1858, he used these words, ‘ Having
been brought up originally as a me-
chanical engineer, and seen perhaps
as much as any one of the other
branches of the profession, I feel jus-
tified in iusisting that the civil
engineering department is _ best
founded upon the mechanical know-
ledge obtained in the workshop. I
have ever been fully conscious how

eatly my civil engineering has
oe modified by the mechanical
knowledge which I acquired from
my father; and the further my ex-

664

erience has advanced, the more

ave I been convinced that itis
necessary to educate an engineer in
the workshop. That is the educa-
tion, emphatically, which is caleu-
lated to render the engineer most
intelligent, most useful, and the
fullest of resources in times of dif-
ficulty.’

In 1824 George Stephenson was
busily engaged in the construction
of the Stockton and Darlington
railway; and at the same time
Robert was occupied in the loco-
motive manufactory already com-
menced at Newcastle, in superin-
tending the construction of No. 1
engine, the ‘ Active,’ for that rail-
way; the same engine that was
lately placed upon a pedestal in front
of the Darlington station. He was
also busy designing the fixed engine
for the Brusselton incline, which he
completed by the end of the year,
when he left England for a time to
take charge of the engines and ma-
chinery of a mining company new!
established in Columbia, South
America. Severe study and close
application had begun to tell upon
his health, and his father consented
that he should accept the situation
which had been offered: him, in the
hope that the change of scene and
occupation might restore him to
health and strength, though ill able
to dispense with his valuable assis-
tance at that important crisis in his
own career.

The Darlington line was finished
and opened, and its success was
such as to encourage the Liverpool
merchants shortly after to project
their undertaking of a railway be-
tween that town and Manchester.
The difficulties encountered in ob-
taining the act, and in constructing
the railway across Chat Moss, are
among the most interesting chapters
in George Stephenson’s life, and
need not be adverted to here.
Then began the battle of the loco-
motive, and the keen discussions
between the advocates of fixed
and travelling engines, George Ste-
phenson standing almost alone
in his advocacy of the latter. At
this juncture he wrote to his son,
urging him to return home, as the
fate of the locomotive hung upon
the issue. Accordingly we find
Robert Stephenson again returned

Robert Stephenson.

[December,

to England, and in charge of the
locomotive manufactory at New-
castle, by the end of the year 1827.
From this time forward Robert was
as his father’s right hand, fortifying
his arguments, illustrating his views,
embodying his ideas in definite
shapes, writing his reports to the
directors, exposing the fallacies
contained in the arguments put for-
ward by the advocates of fixed en-
gines, and in all ways energetically
fighting by the side of his father
the battle of the locomotive. At
length their joint perseverance pro-
duced its effect ; a prize was offered
for the best locomotive, and George
and Robert Stephenson’s engine,
*The Rocket,’ won the prize at
Rainhill. Mr. Booth furnished the
idea of the multitubular boiler;
George Stephenson furnished the
general plan of the engine ; but the
working out of the whole details, on
which so much depended, was car-
ried out by Robert Stephenson
himself in the manufactory at New-
castle. Successful, however, though
the performances of that engine
were, it was but the beginning of
Robert Stephenson’s labours. For
many years after, he continued to
devote himself to perfecting the
locomotive in all its details; and it
was astonishing to observe the ra-
pidity of the improvements effected,
every engine turned out of the
Stephenson workshops exhibiting
an advance upon its predecessor in
point of speed, power, and working
efficiency.

The success of railways being
now proved, railway projects mul-
tiplied in all directions, and Mr.
Stephenson then decided to enter
upon the business of a civil engi-
neer; the first railway laid out by
him being the Leicester and Swan-
ington line; after which, in con-
junction with his father, he was ap-
pointed engineer of the London
and Birmingham Railway. It is re-
lated as an illustration of his con-
scientious perseverance in laying out
this line, that in the course of his ex-
amination of the country between
London and Birmingham, he walked
over the whole intervening districts
upwards of twenty times. The
difficulties encountered in carrying
out this undertaking in those early
days of railway-making were of the

ee ela lUCcCrllClULhLE hee ee CULT Oo!”

mr

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O
e

co

— =
'

.

1859.] Parliamentary Struggles—London and Berwick Railway. 665

most formidable kind, the most im-
rtant being the construction of the
ilsby Tunnel ; but by perseverance

and skill, added to his previous know-

ledge of mining operations, which
proved of great service to him, they
were all surmounted; and the suc-
cess of the London and Birming-
ham Railway speedily introduced
our young engineer to a vast and
prosperous business, in which he
continued to hold the very first place
to the close of his life. It was
stated in his presence, at the cele-
bration of the opening of the High

Level bridge at Newcastle a few

ns ago, that not less than eighteen

undred and fifty miles of railway
had then been constructed after his
designs and under his superinten-
dence, at an outlay of seventy
millions sterling.

His parliamentary business was
necessarily extensive. In the ses-
sion of 1846 he appeared as the en-
gineer for no fewer than thirty-three
schemes; and he might have been
engineer for as many more if he
would have allowed his name to ap-
pear in connexion with them. On
all questions of railway working and
railway construction his evidence
was eagerly sought and highly
valued. Into the controversy re-
aie the comparative merits of
the narrow and broad gauges, and
the locomotive as compared with the
atmospheric system, he threw him-
self with more than ordinary scien-
tific keenness. He was the head
and front of the opposition to his
friend Brunel’s innovations, and the
result proved that his views were
correct. The most vehement par-
liamentary struggle of this kind
occurred in the session of 1845,
when the rival schemes of Brunel
and Stephenson were before Parlia-
ment—the one promoting the Nor-
thumberland Atmospheric and the
other the Newcastle and Berwick
(locomotive) line. The former was
recommended to the Commons
Committee by Mr. Sergeant Wrang-
ham as calculated to be ‘a respect-
able line, and not one that was to
be converted into a road for the ac-
commodation of the coal-owners of
the district;’ and Mr. Brunel
summed up his evidence in these
words— In short, rapidity,comfort,
safety, and economy are its recom-

mendations.’’ Mr. Stephenson was
examined at great length, and his
evidence must have had its due
weight with the Committee, who
passed the preamble of his bill;
and the shareholders were thus
saved much useless expenditure, for
after the lapse of a few years the
atmospheric system was everywhere
abandoned.

The High Level bridge at New-
castle formed part of the east coast
system of railways of which Mr.
Stephenson was io the engineer,
extending from London to Berwick.
This noble work occupied three
years in construction, and it was
opened by her Majesty on the roth
of August, 1849. It is a much finer
architectural structure than any of
the great iron bridges subsequently
erected by Mr. Stephenson, com-
bining also in a remarkable degree
the qualities of strength, rigidity,
and durability. The bridge and
viaduct approaching it are of great
length, being together about four
thousand feet. The bridge spans
the Tyne between Newcastle and
Gateshead, and passes ss
over the roofs of the houses whic
fill the valley on either side the
river. The prospect from the bridge
is most striking; the Tyne, full of
shipping, lies a hundred and thirty
feet below, the funnels and masts of
steamers being visible when the
smoke allows far down the river.
Seen from beneath, the bridge is
very majestic, the impress of power
being grandly stamped upon it.
One of the most important features
of the bridge—characteristic of all
Mr. Stephenson’s structures, but
especially so in this case—is its
utility. It is a double bridge,
forming a direct road connecting
the busy towns of Newcastle and
Gateshead with each other, at the
same time that it is an integral part »
of the railway system along which
the traffic by the east coast between
England and Scotland is enabled to
pass without break of gauge ; and it
will probably remain, for many cen-
turies to come, the finest and most
appropriate monument in Newcastle
to the native genius of the Stephen-
sons.

Another of Mr. Stephenson’s
great structures is his well known
Britannia Bridge across the Menai

666

Straits, a masterly work, the result
of laborious calculation, founded on
painstaking experiment, combined
with eminent constructive genius
and high moral and _ intellectual
courage. The original idea embodied
by Mr. Stephenson in this bridge,
was the application of wrought iron
tubes in the form of an aerial tunnel,
for the purpose of spanning this
arm of the sea at such a height as
to enable vessels of large burden to
pass underneath in full sail. The
arch was rejected as incompatible
with the requirements of the Act of
Parliament, and the engineer was
thrown upon his own resources to
overcome the apparently insur-
mountable difficulties of the passage.
After much reflection and study,
the scheme of a wrought-iron
hollow beam of gigantic dimensions
was adopted; Mr. Stephenson feel-
ing satisfied that the principles on
which the idea was founded were
nothing more than an extension of
those in daily use in the profession
of the engineer. While his mind

was still occupied with the subject
in its earlier stages, an accident oc-
curred to the Prince of Wales iron

steamship at Blackwall, which sin-
gularly corroborated Mr. Stephen-
son’s views as to the strength of
wrought-iron beams of large dimen-
sions. While launching this vessel,
the cleet on the bow gave way in
consequence of the bolts breaking,
and let the vessel down so that the
bilge came in contact with the wharf,
al she remained suspended be-
tween the water and the wharf for
a distance of about one hundred
and ten feet, without injury to the
plates of the ship, thus proving her
great strength. The illustration
was well-timed, and so fully con-
firmed the calculations which Mr.
Stephenson had already made on
the strength of tubular structures,
that it greatly relieved his anxiety,
and converted his confidence into a
certainty that he had not under-
taken an impracticable task. "Then
commenced a series of elaborate ex-
periments, in which the engineer was
ably assisted by Fechner Uhalahie
son, Mr. Fairbairn, and Mr. E.
Clarke, to determine the best form,
thickness, and dimensions of the
required tubes, so that assurance
might be made doubly sure. Every

Robert Stephenson.

[December,

detail was carefully attended to, and
not a point was neglected that could
add to the efficiency and security of
the structure. As Mr. Stephenson
himself said at the opening of the
bridge for traffic, ‘the ‘true and
accurate calculation of all the con-
ditions and elements essential to
the safety of the bridge, had been
a source, not only of mental, but of
bodily toil; including, as it did, a
combination of abstract thought and
well considered experiment ade-
quate to the magnitude of the pro-
ject. Mr. Stephenson’s anxiety
was very great during the arduous

rocess of raising the tubes, and it
is said that for three weeks he was
almost sleepless. Sir F. Head,
however, relates that on the morn-
ing following the raising of the final
tube, when about to leave the scene
of so many days’ harassing opera-
tions, he observed, sitting on a plat-
form which had been erected to
enable some of the more favoured
spectators to command a good view
of the preceding day's operations,
a gentleman reclining entirely by
himself, smoking a cigar, and as if
almost indolently gazing at the
aerial gallery before him. It was
the father looking at his new-born
child! He had strolled down from
the neighbouring village, after his
first sound and refreshing sleep for
weeks, to behold in sunshine and
solitude that which during a weary
period of gestation had been either
mysteriously moving in his brain,
or like a vision—sometimes of good
omen, and sometimes of bad—had
by night as well as by day been
flitting across his mind.

The Victoria Bridge across the
St. Lawrence, near Montreal, is
constructed on the same principle
as the Britannia Bridge, but on a
much larger scale ; the Victoria
Bridge with its approaches, being
only sixty yards short of two miles
in length. In its gigantic strength
and majestic proportions there is
no structure to compare with it in
ancient or modern times. It con-
sists of not less than twenty five im-
mense tubular bridges joined into
one; the great central span being
three hundred and thirty feet, the
others two hundred and forty-two
feet in length. ‘The weight of
wrought iron in the bridge is about

1859.]

ten thousand tons, and the piers
are of massive stone, containing
some eight thousand tons each of
solid masonry. Of this last and
greatest of his works, it is to be
lamented that the engineer did not
live to see the completion.

Mr. Stephenson was _ greatly
esteemed in his profession, and when
any difficulty arose, he was prompt
to render his best advice and assis-
tance. When Mr. Brunel was oc-
cupied with his first fruitless efforts
to launch the Great Eastern, at the
close of one most disheartening
day’s work, he wrote Mr. Stephen-
son, urging him to come down to
Blackwall on the following morning,
and confer with him as to further
measures. Next morning Mr. Ste-
phenson was in the yard at Black-
wall shortly after six o'clock, and
he remained there until dusk.
While superintending the opera-
tions about mid-day, he came to the
end of a balk of timber which canted
up, and he fell up to his middle in
the Thames mud. He was merely in
his ordinary dress, without any
great coat (though the weather was
bitter cold) and with only thin boots
upon his feet. He was urged to
leave the yard and change his dress,
but, with his usual disregard of
health, his reply was, ‘Oh, never
mind me, I’m quite used to this
sort of thing ;’ and he went paddling
about in the mud, smoking his
cigar until almost quite dark, when
the work of the day was completed.
The consequence of this exposure
was an Senile of the lungs,
which kept him to his bed for a
fortnight.

No man could be more beloved
than Mr. Stephenson was by a wide
circle of friends. His pupils and
juniors in the profession regarded

im with a sort of worship; and he
even ran some risk of being spoilt
by the adulation with which they
surrounded him. But he preserved
his simplicity, his modesty, and his
manliness, through all. He was a
kind and pleasant companion, very
unaffected, cordial, and communi-
cative. Possessing ample means,

His Honours and Death.

667

he was enabled to do many bene-
volent acts, particularly to those
who had worked with him in the
early part of his career; and he
was always ready to help on the
deserving and the industrious.

He was greatly honoured in his
life, though he died untitled. Like
his father, he was offered knight-
hood, and declined it; but he ac-
cepted the honours of foreign
ra for whom he had per-
ormed important services. By the
King of the Belgians he was made
Knight of the Order of Leopold;
the King of Sweden presented him
with the Grand Cross of Olaf; and
the Emperor of the French deco-
rated him with the Order of the
Legion of Honour. In 1857 the
University of Oxford conferred on
him the honour of D.C.L.; and
for many years he represented
Whitby in Parliament. The
greatest honour of all, however,
was reserved for his death, when
he was laid to rest amidst the great
departed of England in West-
minster Abbey.

Amongst those who stood beside
his grave were many of the friends
of his boyhood and his manhood.
William Kell, Philip Staunton, and
Joseph Glynn, his schoolfellows ;
Nicholas Wood, his first master in
the business of life; Joseph San-
dars, the projector of the Liverpool
and Manchester Railway; Henry
Booth, his coadjutor in designing
the ‘ Rocket,’ which won the prize at
Rainhill; Joseph Locke and John
Dixon, his early professional com-
panions; Mr. Glyn, Mr. Ellis,
and Mr. Joseph Pease, fast friends
of his father, as well as himself;
down to Henry Weatherburn, driver
of the ‘Harvey Combe,’ beside
whom the engineer stood on the
foot plate of the locomotive at the
opening of the London and Birming-
hamRailway. Besides these, were
many of the greatest living men of
thought and action, assembled at
that solemn ceremony to pay their
last mark of respect to this illus-
trious son of one of England’s
greatest working men. Requiescat!

SaMvEL SMILEs.

668

NELDA: A ROMANCE,

TRANSLATED FROM Grossi. (Marco Visconti, i. pp. 276—83).

AS the rose, when May with dews
And sunlight feeds its earliest age,
Such was young Folchetto, page
To Raymond of Toulouse :
In feats of arms brave, skilled, and strong:
A master and a child of song.

One, that on some festal day
Hears him thunderlike advance
O’er the lists with poiséd lance
On his barb of dapple gray ;
With strong St. George would match his might,
To whom the dragon quailed in fight.

Then if to a mournful lay
He yields his streamlike voice, and sings,
Flaxen locks in thousand rings

Down his throat of silver play :

Touching thee with wonder’s dream,

Like an angel he shall seem.

Every boldest lord in arms
ngs for him, his court to grace:
Every fair Provengal face
Wastes in sighs for him its charms:
The faithful page two only move—
His chieftain, and his lady-love.

Nelda was the child adored
(Black her eyebrows, black her hair,
Her cheek as ivory’s whiteness fair,)
Of a Salamancan lord.
All Toulouse’s court displayed
Lovelier none nor haughtier maid.

Yet the youth’s adoring pain
Masters not her pride, nor sways:
‘He is of the herd,’ she says
Inwardly and with disdain :
‘The baron’s child must never, no,
Stoop to fix her heart so low.’

Mourns the page in loving moan,
Night and day upon the strings:
His cobda and sirventa sings,

Sings for her and her alone:

Essays the quintan game amain,

And shivers lances, all in vain.

Like a flower within the glade
Languishing, he droops apace :
Wanness overspreads his face,

And his hues of beauty fade,

And the fire of his blue eyes

By little and by little dies.

Nelda: a Romance.

And _ he lives: for Raymond poured
ich bounties o’er him like a son:
Girded him with knightly sword,
Chose him Count of fair Narbonne:
And ‘take thee for thy wife,’ he said,
‘The lovely and the haughty maid.’

—_—»~——.

Through Toulouse, from its forts and its fields,
Swarms an armament mighty and proud ;
For Raymond of Provence had vowed
To visit a rebel with pains.
No baron, no city, but yields
The tribute of faith to its head ;
Man and horse to. Antibes they have sped ;
With their tents they have whitened its plains.

To Folchetto that rode by his side

Spake Raymond with tenderest care :

‘Why ever so mournful ? the fair

hou desirest, thou soon shalt receive :

Already to bring thee thy bride

My messenger hies to Narbonne:

I have parted the fond ones too soon,

And with thy faithful grieving I grieve.’

*Tis the day that his Nelda should come,
And another, another, succeeds,
And a fourth; and yet tarry the steeds,
And his loved and his longed for, she stays:
The uproar of battle is dumb,
The banner of treason is low:
To his true dapple gray he must go,
Nor for leave nor for love he delays.

Unto sunset he journeys alone
By the way to the home of his heart:
To a village then verges apart,
That amidst the gray olives ascends.
Where beneath a mean hostelry moan
The billows, and burst in their might,
Lo! a woman, that weeps in his sight,
And her gaze over Ocean she bends.

By the beauty her gestures display
It is she, by her garb, by her face:
He trembles approaching the place—
It is Nelda, he knows it too well:
He abandons his steed on the way—
He darts to her, thrilled with suspense—
‘ What, my bride? and oh wherefore? and whence
In tears and in loneliness, tell ?’

——a

With hair dishevelled, iy

Yet resolute the while,
Her tremulous lips unfolding

A cold and haughty smile,
She bends on him her eyes:
* Hold off, and hear,’ she cries.

‘Nelda: a Romance.

‘In me thou didst disgrace
The blood of many a sire:
He could not mend thy race
That picked thee from the mire ;
The villain lord, that gave
My hand to be thy slave.

‘ The injury, the shame,
My spirit might not bear:
I yielded up to blame
My slighted form but fair,
For vengeance, proud delight,
Unto a British knight.

* By him I was betrayed ;
And, to a sudden sound,
I sprang from sleep dismayed,
And saw the sails unbound,
And the traitor with the breeze
Escaped along the seas.

‘Twice have I seen the sun
Arise, and twice descend,
While o’er these shores unknown
My sad stray steps I bend,
A finger-pointed show
To them that pity woe.

‘ And what remains? for grace
Shall I, a suppliant, go
Before thy scornéd face ?
I am not yet so low:
But tell my sire, and fly,

That thou hast seen me die.’

She springs from air to earth,
And from the earth again
She plunges with a leap
bean headlong in the main:
Along with ocean’s sigh
He heard a fall, a cry.

The senseless rocks they tore
Her fair and tender limbs :
They sank, they rose no more :
But yet her white veil swims,
And the circling waters glowed
With the deep tint of blood.

————_

No tear bedews
His cheek so sad ;
In black steel clad,
Such as he stands,
So mute, so lone,
Along the sands
He wends his way :

The winds they murmur,

The waves are white:

He strains his sight

Toward the strand

From his boat-side,

To the fair loved land
He left to-day.

Nelda: a Romance.

Mid northern clouds

Borne far and fast,

Lo! now at last

His journeyings cease:

He finds the knight

That robbed his peace,
On Albion’s shore.

They sweep the plain,

They point the lance ;

In swift advance

Together dash

Their wrathful steeds

As lightning’s flash :
One rose no more.

Then both unsheathed
The thundering sword,
And thickly poured,
On helm and shield,
Their echoing strokes
In cruel field

Of rivalry.

His pantings held

Within his breast,

Folchetto prest

His traitor foe,

And pierced his heart

And laid him low
With savage glee.

Pale, deadly pale,
Yet telling still
Of threat and ill
His caitiff face:
And with his hand
Upon the place
He reeled, and died.

The conqueror sheathed
His reeking sword :
Looked on the lord
That slaughtered lay,
Yet not with glance
Or proud or gay

His victim eyed.

—_——

Fast by the farthest bound of Spain,
And on a mountain’s broken seat,
Whose base is washed in yonder main
That fronts green Provence, a retreat
Of sainted Bruno meets the winds :
There few and chosen souls on high
Wild roots and herbs for diet share :
Deep hoods conceal the earthward eye ;
The painful haircloth that they wear
No power but only Death unbinds.

The stricken bell with clangour makes
The arches of a vault resound:
Each downcast monk in silence takes
His place a newmade grave around,
Bach one his brother sadly eying:

Long Vacation Readings.

But who is he, on earth laid low,

z With arms across upon his breast?

The torchlight flickering to and fro
Upon his features, tells the rest :

The Lord of fair Narbonne is dying.

White white his ample beard, like snow,
Flows down his tunic’s belt beneath,

And, heaving, now ascends, and now,
Subsides with his alternate breath,

As foam upon the billow sways :

*Mid the chaste thoughts of that last hour,
Within his aged soul serene,

One rebel image darts with power,
The image of that awful scene

That length of years could not erase.

Even as he saw her on that day,
Her dark hair streaming to the gale,
He sees her still around him stray,
Dissolved in tears, with visage pale

Yet fair, his bride of faithless breast:

Oh! aged saint! and dost thou pour,
Still pour the bitter hidden tear P

What ails thee ?

Ah! I doubt no more:
Thy fondly loved shall not appear
Among the spirits of the b

lest.

W. E. G.

LONG

Reces are rather a bore during
the holidays. The Long Vaca-
tion should be devoted to finer uses
and better ends. The first brace of
grouse one knocks over on the 12th,
when the grey mists of the morning
still linger upon the heather, are
worth a wagonload of the classics.
The swift descent of a pheasant
through the yellowing leaves of the
October brushwood, is a nobler
spectacle than the fall of ‘ Priam’s
towery town, with its one breach,’ or
Dido’s funeral pyre. What cares
the man who has bagged the earliest
woodcock in his cover — it came
across in the moonlight last week,
and still smells of the Norwegian
larch—for a ministerial manifesto
or a continental crisis P

Then if you are a lawyer—and in
these days when Lord Chancellors
indite Handy-Books for the million,
law has become light reading, and
competes successfully with Bulwer,
James, and Mrs. Beecher Stowe—
you have the autumn circuit to
sharpen your wits, and refresh your
whist. A murder trial—especially if
you bungle your client’s case and

VACATION READINGS.

get him hanged—is a very exquisite
piece of work. The laborious in-
genuity with which the ‘ minions of
the court’ (as Mr. Bright denomi-
nates crown counsel) cast their toils
around you—the wicked zest with
which they draw the net close, and
shut up every loophole of escape—
the temporary relief you experience
when the presiding judge, with a
strong provincial accent, assures the
jury that ‘if the pannel is hanged,
he may thank his coonsel for’t’—
your renewed anxiety (as if the
rope that is to throttle your client
were already round your own neck)
when the jurors retire to consider
their verdict, and hour after hour
elapses in the hushed and dimly
lighted room (so dim and silent that
the ghosts of all the felons who
have met their doom there, come
trooping in to glance at their latest
representative among mortal men)
—and then at last the superb
triumph over the baffled myrmidons
of the law, as the foreman, who has
conscientious scruples about capital
punishment, announces that ‘ Not
proven, by a majority of one,’ is the

1859.]

miraculous result at which he and
the other pillars of the constitution
have arrived: all these things make
a trial for murder a very cheerful
episode for the holidays.

Some amiable men, I know, de-
vote the Long Vacation toa consti-
tutional course of flirtation. Very
agreeable, no doubt; but dange-
rous. If you can listen undisturbed
to the rustle of the breezy muslins
as the Circes troop into the break-
fast room; if you can drive down
with Arabella in her pony-cart to
see the Kamtschatka geese on the
pond, and refrain from making any
allusions to ‘ducks;’ if you can
shoot a sheaf of arrows against
Beatrix, and regard with unrufiled
composure the flushed cheek and
the piquant wide-awake, with its
pheasant hackle; if you can read
The Lord of Burleigh to Lilias ;—

In her ear he whispers gaily,
‘If my heart by signs can tell,
Maiden, I have watch’d thee daily,
And I think thou lov’st me well.’
She replies, in accents fainter,
‘There is none I love like thee.’
He is but a landscape painter,
And a village maiden she.
He to lips that fondly falter,
Presses his without reproof,
Leads her to the village altar,
And they leave her father’s roof.
‘I can make no marriage present,
Little can I give my wife ;
Love will make our cottage pleasant,
And I love thee more than life ;—

if you can read Lord Burleigh to
Lilias, and in an unelastic age, when
love wont make a cottage pleasant
on less than a thousand a year, con-
quer the insane temptation to ‘ go
and do likewise,’ then you may
without fear embark in the engross-
ing pursuit. If not, get your clerk
to telegraph for you on ‘urgent
business,’ and be off by the night
mail. How many wretched victims
we have all seen; and yet the reite-
rated warning avails not. ‘ The races
of men make haste to destruction.’
A man who has lost his heart is, I
think, the most humiliating spectacle
in the universe. The distemper is
sometimes taken mildly, no doubt;
but in a virulent case the symptoms
are most distressing. Jones is a

How to spend the Long Vacation.

673.

good fellow and a crack shot, who
smokes his cavendish with relish and

lays his trumps like a man. Had
i been told six months ago that his
society would become utterly in-
sufferable, I should have repelled
the imputation with the generous
indignation of friendship. But truth,
which is greater than friendship,
compels me to own that he had not
been introduced to Lady Clara
Augusta Millicent Fitzboodle for a
week ere Jones became a most con-
firmed bore. Nothing more dreary
can be imagined. He would neither
shoot, nor smoke, nor speak, nor
sleep; he lost the use of his tongue
and his teeth ; he took to reading the
Great Tribulation,* and at length
actually trumped his partner’s win-
ning diamond. Classic friendship,
mortal patience could not of course
stand that, and—we parted. Whose
experience is not similarly illus-
trated? Sappho’s love and hate,
the wise Mr. Pope says, are alike
dangerous. So don’t let us play
with edged tools—unless our hand
is steady.

Not caring a sixpence for science,
you devote, of course, a week of
your holiday to the British Associa-
tion. You don’t attend the sec-
tional meetings, nor mingle in the
battles of the gods; but you go to
hear the Prince on the first field-
night, and to the Conversazione on
the succeeding, to show the fair
dwellers in the granite city that
one distinguished savant can dress
like a gentleman. Though a stead-
fast Jacobite, I pay a qualified alle-
giance to the House of Hanover,
and am prepared to take the oath
of abjuration on my appointment to
any lucrative sinecure in the gift of
the Crown. But the Japanese
fashion of shutting up royalty apart
as a sacred thing, seems to me, I
confess, profoundly politic. When
powers and principalities mingle
with men, we are apt to forget the
awful reverence that ‘should hedge
a king.’ ‘For my part,’ remarked
Robinson, who sat near me on the
opening night, ‘ I say, let Professor
Owen rule over us. He is every
inch a king. The frank, noble,
generous intelligence of that grand

* Dr. Cumming’s The Great Tribulation Coming on the Earth ; or, as a wicked
critic epitomizes it, The Great Tribulation—Cumming on the Earth.

674

face extorts submission and loyal
obedience.’ Still, the Prince’s ad-
dress was exceedingly creditable. I
did not indeed hear much of it; but
that was partly, no doubt, my own
fault, and partly the fault of a pair
of violet eyes in the vicinity. The
violet eyes of the Aigean were very
distracting in Anacreon’s time ;
and the violet eyes of the North
Sea continue to enforce the historic
law discovered by the classic co-
quette.

All scientific meetings are very
much alike; but the meeting in the
Granite City was in one respect
unique. The archeological exhibi-
tion was admirable, and reflects
infinite credit on the gentlemen who
organized it.* The successive stages
in our civilization —since bare-
legged Kernes paddled round their
stormy coasts on sheep-skin hurdles
—were adequately illustrated. The
relics of the Jacobite chivalry were
peculiarly numerous and interest-
ing. The andrea ferrara with its
rebellious device, the ‘uncanny’
dirks, the antique pistols, the heavy
claymores, used by historic prince
and peer, and still preserved in
many a highland keep by their de-
scendants; and, most precious of
any, the very gear and armour, the
tartan plaid, the short sword, the
targe with the royal arms and Me-
dusat head, worn by the young
Prince Charlie that misty morning
at Culloden, before the clans were
scattered! Quite authentic, I sup-
pose, quite as authentic as most
Catholic relics at least, and believed
in not a century ago with a faith
as warm and implicit. One felt
when among these memorials, that
the Jacobite chivalry was not quite
dead, and that, in some secluded
nooks among the northern hills, the
sentiment for the ‘old house’ may
even yet linger.

Mr. Carlyle, who holds that you
cannot know a man till you have
seen his face, would have been im-
mensely gratified (if indeed any-
thing now can gratify the victim on

Long Vacation Readings.

[December,

whom the German Dryasdust has
so cruelly sat) with the portrait
gallery. 1 am convinced that a better
collection has never been made in
this country. All the pictures were
interesting as representations of
great men and beautiful women;
as works of art many were sur-
prisingly good. There was little or
none of the Egyptian darkness of
which historical portraits commonly
consist. The majority, on the con-
trary, were of rare excellence.
Morier and Mignard’s portraits of
the last of the Stuarts,—very lovely
smooth-cheeked children faces :
Gavin Hamilton’s unfinished sketch
of Elizabeth Gunning, the cele-
brated beauty—a face which, with
its dreamy blue eyes, and languish-
ing sweetness of expression, fasci-
nates even on canvas: Sir Peter
Lely’s portrait of Henrietta, Duchess
of Gordon, a grave little lady of ten
or twelve in capacious old-fashioned
frills; and Sir Joshua’s of a later
duchess of the same great house :
Jameson’s Anne, Marchioness of
Huntley, and Vandyck’s graceful,
winning, and modest Henrietta
Maria; pictures which prove that
the old painters could draw ‘a lady,’
as well as Swinton or Frank Grant ;
these and many more were admi-
rable specimens of art. There were
half a dozen miniatures by foreign
artists of the Comtesse d’Albanie;
the bold, bright, penetrating eyes,
and the cicadas twisted through
the knotted hair, appearing in each
—cameo miniatures once worn on
‘royal hands and princely hearts,’
as they might well be; for the
lady’s beauty is radiant, and the
cameos are superb. The single
‘Gainsborough’ was very fine, but
not equal to that exquisite one in
the N, ational Gallery at Edinburgh,
of Mrs. Grahame, the piquant
grace and saucy beauty of which I
should in vain try to déscribe.
Does Mr. Carlyle’s maxim hold
good? Does the portrait of a man
enable you to divine his biography ?
We can test it here. The hideous

* Mr. James Hay Chalmers and Mr.

’ . Charles Elphinstone Dalrymple,—gentle-
men admirably qualified by tastes and acquirements to discharge such a duty
efficiently.

+ The Medusa, if I recollect aright. Surely a stroke of satire. For what fitter
device could an enemy have selected for the unhappy race that destroyed every

one who came in contact with it, and in whose ill-fortunes so many noble gentle-
men perished ?

,
L
:
L
L
L
’

~ crs “—- wv we

Ci aw =

1859.] The Archeological Exhibition at Aberdeen. 675

satyr, leering upon us out of those
bloodshot sagacious eyes, is the last
Lord Lovat, whom Hogarth painted
in the Tower the day before they
hanged the old rogue. This is
Hogarth’s picture, and though per-
haps more like a burlesque than
anything the great satirist ever did,
is said not to be a caricature. There
are three portraits of the Marquis
of Montrose, which tell their own
story; first, the one painted by
Jameson, when the Satan a lad
of seventeen; in which signs of a
conscious power, and more mature
composure ‘ than should be in one
so young,’ may be traced; and then
two—by Jameson and Gerard Hon-
thorst—of the man; a brave and
open, but sad-faced and sallow gen-
tleman, dressed in the sable suit he
always wore after the King’s death.
So he may have looked that wild
day when he landed from the
Orkneys, the royal standard in
black, and Nil Medium upon his
own. His lifelong rival, ‘Gillespie
Grumach,’ hangs beneath him—the
unkempt red Lair and the hard,
sour, vindictive scowl presenting a
marked contrast to the grave but
winning beauty of the ‘Great Mar-
om: Of all the Gordons, aes
rd Gordon, the eldest son of the
chief, was the only one who mag-
nanimously forgave Montrose the
old wrong he had done their house ;
and that fine head—not strikingly
handsome, but speaking of honour,
honesty, and stedfastness in every
line—must be a true likeness of the
gallant gentleman who fell at Alford.
But if these are sufficiently charac-
teristic, there are many that conflict
with Mr. Carlyle’s doctrine. This
mild and humane countenance, a
humorous twinkle hovering about
the eyes, belonged to ‘the bluidy
Advocate,’ Sir George Mackenzie of
Rosehaugh ; that venerable white-
haired prelate, whose refined and
intellectual features and thin mas-
terful mouth suggest the acute
student or the scholar great in
Greek verbs, is the notorious Sharpe,
who perished for his sins on Magus
Muir. Mr. Mark Napier has asked
us to arrest our judgment on
‘Dundee ;’ and unless he can show
ae cause for the appeal, Mr.
arlyle’s test will not serve. For
the most winning gentleman in the
VOL, LX. NO. CCCLX.

room is John Grahame. A face of
almost girlish loveliness ; soft, ten-
der, effeminate, and voluptuous as
the Antinous in the Albano; one
tinge of sadness, one touch of scorn,
—such, if we can believe the artist,
was the fell ‘Claverse,’ who in cold
blood, and with his own woman-like
hand, slaughtered the saints of God.

But there are wet and windy
days during the Vacation, when the
birds will not sit, and even Neptune
gets his petticoats draggled. On
such days you are of necessity
brought to book. You must either
read or sleep; and sleep, the poet
says, is as capricious as Death—
‘Death, and his brother, Sleep.’
The Idylis of the King is of course
in your carpet-bag; but the day to
enjoy that noble poem, to muse
over its rare lessons of knightly
courtesy, and chivalrous magna-
nimity, and unselfish sacrifice, to
appreciate the sad pathos of ‘the
great knight’s’ guilty love for Gui-
nevereandthe wronged king’s twice-
blessed charity a great forgive-
ness, to summon before your
imagination that last farewell—a
scene unrivalled anywhere on all
‘the shores of old romance,’—

And while she grovell’d ai his feet,
She felt the King’s breath wander o’er
the neck,
And in the darkness o’er her fallen
head
Perceived the waving of his hands that
blest, —
is the day when you can lie among
the golden gorse on the beach;
when ‘ the warm South’ comes laden
with heather bloom ; when the bees
and the breeze, and the ripple at
your feet, blend their murmurous
talk with the stately procession and
rich music of the ordered lines. If
you have quarrelled with your mate
or your mistress, if the birds will
not fall, however true you aim; if
that wily old fellow in the Salmon
Pot below the Linn only ‘ sniffs’ at
your flies, and laughs in his cheek
at your finest ‘cast;’ if you have
lost your temper and your money
at the target, and used too often
the words of the hapless lover
of Oriana, ‘The damnéd arrow
glanced aside,’ then take the Idylls
down with you to the brink of old
Ocean (how blue and fresh he looks
through the green leaves to-day),
ze

676

and get rid of your bile before
dinner.

No one thinks of reading a novel
for recreation now. Our novelists
have entered into a league to bore
the public, and—except Mr. Guy
Livingstoneand Mr. Whyte Melville,
whom Fraser delighteth to honour
—succeed very fairly. Every no-
velist has his ‘ mission,’ and every
shilling novel enforces its ‘ moral.’
This is too bad. But of course, as
some one has said, the remedy is
obvious. ‘The public will give up
reading romance, and when it wants
amusement will turn to Mr. Spur-
geon’s theology or Mr. Tupper’s
philosophy. The novel will become
forbidden ground to the idle and the
frivolous—to any, in short, except
“‘ serious” readers.’

Theology, fortunately, is fast be-
coming one of the lighter relaxations
of a literary leisure, and not being
‘serious’ readers we devote this
windy morning to theological study.
There are few more entertaining
books than Mr. Mansel’s Lectures
‘on the Absolute.’ Were he de-
scribing a Parisian féte or a petit-
souper in a Viennese boudoir, he
could not write in a pleasanter or
more epigrammatic vein. He de-
stroys time and space, and annihi-
lates the Absolute with infinite
smartness and bonhomie. Surely to
crush this adroit performer in the
trenchant way Mr. Maurice does is
a little too unfeeling. We don’t
resent a conjuror’s tricks; and Mr.
Mansel’s manipulation of the In-
finite is managed with the skill and
airiness of a finished artiste.

But mortals quickly weary of
these escapades into ‘ dreamless
space.’

The chargers of ethereal race,

With necks in thunder clothed, and

long resounding pace,
are hard to hold, and the fate of
Phaeton warns us.
For what, alas! is it to us
Whether, i’ th’ moon, men thus or thus
Do eat their porridge, cut their corns,
Or whether they have tails or horns?
We want life, warmth, colour;
the vivid interests and the sharp
contests of flesh and blood. So we
turn to the noble drama of the Re-
formation as outlined in Principal

Long Vacation Readings.

[ December,

Tulloch’s masterly sketches,* and
mingle once more with the great
men who animated and atthe
spiritual revolt against Rome.

A lecture is nearly as dismal a
business as a sermon; and to endure
it with. composure is the test of
modern heroism, as the search for
the San Greal was of the antique.
But these lectures on the Reformers
were well worth hearing; and the
great interest they excited when
originally delivered in Edinburgh,
was no mean tribute to the culti-
vated intelligence of a Scottish
audience. Principal Tulloch no
doubt possesses many of the natu-
ral gifts of the orator; he speaks
with energy, decision, feeling, and
admirable directness. But it was
the thinker, even more than the
orator, who captivated the attention
of the listeners. A great theme was
being worthily treated by one who
appreciated its significance and un-
derstood its lessons. An intellect
singularly temperate and dispas-
sionate was estimating with judi-
cial calmness and generous sym-
pathy the motives and fruits of a
stormy struggle. There was no
strained pathos, no artificial rheto-
ric; but the words were weighty
and condensed, and _ coloured
throughout by the vivid light of a
vigorous and glowing imagination.

Dr. Tulloch is an eloquent writer,
and his estimate of the causes and
effects of the sixteenth - century
struggle is at once luminous and
profound. But to the reflective
reader (if any specimen of that ex-
tinct species yet survives) the most
interesting trait in the book is the
temper of mind it discloses. Scot-
land was the land where the narrow
and frigid Puritanism of the most
narrow and frigid of the Reformers
attained maturity ; the land where
any freedom of independent convic-
tion or any diversity of religious
life was rigorously crushed out.
Not in Geneva itself was the Civitas
Dei associated more closely with
the police office. The bonds, no
doubt, are being loosed; the nation
is freeing itself from an inquisitorial
authority as subtle in its ramifica-
tions, as complete in its machinery,
and as arrogant in its pretensions

* Leaders of the Reformation, BySohnTulloch,D.D. Edinburgh: Blackwood. 1859.

1859.]

as that of Rome. Yet the spirit
which infected the fierce, dogmatic,
and unscrupulous Calvinism of the
Covenanting assemblies is not dead ;
and at the present day Scotland
strikingly illustrates the unhappy
truth, that the most extreme libe-
ralism in political sentiment may be
allied with spiritual intolerance and
social tyranny. It was therefore
no doubt a pleasant surprise to
many readers to find, within the
very citadel of the system, a man
like the writer of this book. To say
that Dr. Tulloch is fair, candid, and
dispassionate, is to say little. His
sagacious moderation, his rare tem-
perance, his thorough impartiality,
would be notable anywhere ; within
the sanctuary of a stiff-necked sect
the presence of these virtues is, in
Mr. Mansel’s phraseology, ‘a moral
miracle.” Moderation no doubt
sometimes cloaks indifference, and
impartiality is proverbially associ-
ated with the ni/ admirari. But it
is not so here. Dr. Tulloch is per-
fectly moderate, but perfectly in
earnest. He is tolerant because

his own convictions are honest and
deeply rooted. He is impartial be-
cause he has a generous sympathy

with the true and noble, wherever
he finds them. The influence which
an intellect of this kind is fitted to
exert over the Church and nation
to which it belongs cannot easily
be overrated. A devout and tole-
rant ecclesiastic, across the Border
at least, is a rara avis, and the calm
and candid criticism of such a man
must be listened to with peculiar
attention.

The Reformation has not yet been
adequately illustrated, nor gauged
with any fineness of critical appre-
hension. The forces which pro-
duced it were everywhere indeed
very much alike. It was a protest
against the practice as well as
against the doctrine of the Papacy.
The reviving spiritual life was
alienated by the doctrinal mate-
rialism of Rome: the reviving moral
life was shocked by its practical
licentiousness. The two motives
were everywhere combined, though
not always in the same proportions.
In Germany the insurrection may
be said to have been in great mea-
sure the fruit of a profound spiritual
excitement; in Mngland it was

Dr. Tulloch’s ‘Leaders of the Reformation.’

677

chiefly due to the political indigna-
tion which the corruptions of the
monastic system had roused; in
Scotland both forces worked with
nearly equal activity. But these
subordinate national peculiarities do
not affect the vital unity of the
movement. The ideas and feelings
which the Reformation gave voice
to were everywhere substantially
the same: the form of expression
alone varied. To throw the ima-
gination back into that troubled
age; to watch the manifestations of
the strange new spirit—‘ that fire of
Almighty God’—which was moving
with an irresistible impulse all the
northern peoples, the rude ‘ Prussen’
cuuier- dain on the Baltic Sea, and
the polished courtiers and sharp
logicians of Paris, and Rotterdam,
and Geneva; to discriminate the
modifications which national habit,
idiosyncrasy, and temperament im-
pressed upon it; toestimate thesocial
changes in the life of Europe which
it effected ; to track its progress, in
one nation dying out after a brief
voleanic life, in another quenched in
martyr blood, in another clinging to
the cliffs and keeping a pure flame
alight in rough mountain hearts, in
another wisely appropriated by
prince and prelate, permitted to
work out its work unmolested, and
to mould in calmness and beneficence
the policy of governments and the
history of an empire—this is a task
which has not yet been adequatel
performed, col which Dr. Tulloch
1s admirably qualified to undertake.
In his present volume the leaders
of the movement are sketched with
vivid effect and graphic life. The
genial heart and broad sympathies
of Luther, his manliness, his simple
affectionateness, the bluntness and
heartiness of his temper, the rude
strength and hilarious riot of his
humour; the wrapt, austere, and
passionless Calvin, his logical direct-
ness and naked simplicity of intel-
lect, his legislative capacity and the
great practical and administrative
genius which cast the stormy forces
of the Reformation into a compact
and symmetrical mould ; the caustic
irony and benevolent piety of
Latimer; the humour, the narrow-
ness, the bitterness, and the ‘ harsh
sense’ of Knox—are all portrayed
with remarkable truth and skill.
yx¥2

678

Dr. Tulloch could not fail to make
an accomplished critic, for he brings
to the work a rich and felicitous
style, a keen and searching insight,
a temperate and unprejudiced judg-
ment, and the capacity for analysis
which men whose sympathies are
broad and active generally possess.
The sketch of Calvin and of the
Calvinistic system is of special in-
terest, being, as it is, the first
honest attempt that has been
made to appreciate the true posi-
tion of the man and the precise
value of his work. The Genevese
reformer has been hitherto written
about in hysterics and heroics; he
has been ignorantly worshipped and
ignorantly defamed; Dr. Tulloch
has at length supplied a fair, intel-
ligent, and exhaustive estimate.

We have spoken more strong]
than is our wont of the merit of this
book ; but we are sure that such of
our readers as have perused it will
feel that our estimate is not exag-
gerated. For the sake of those who
are yet unacquainted with it, we
subjoin a few extracts, taken almost
at random from its pages.

Luther and Erasmus :

While Luther was thus standing in
the breach, in favour of social order,
against the peasants, and feeling, in
the odium he thereby incurred, that he
was no longer the popular chieftain he
had been a few years before, he was
made, at the same time, somewhat
painfully to feel that he was no longer
in unison with the mere literary or
humanistic party in the Reformation.
Erasmus, the recognised head of this
party, had long been showing signs of
impatience at what he considered to
be Luther’s rudeness and violence. He
could not sympathise in the intense
earnestness of the Wittenberg reformer :
the religious zeal, the depth of persua-
sion, and especially the polemical shape
which the latter’s convictions had as-
sumed in his doctrine of grace, were all
unintelligible or positively displeasing
to him. No two men could be more
opposed at once in intellectual aspira-
tion and in moral temper ;—Luther
aiming at dogmatic certainty in all
matters of faith, and filled with an
overmastering feeling as to the impor-
tance of this certainty to the whole
religious life, with the most vivid sense
of the invisible world touching him at
every point, and exciting him now with
superstitious fear, and now with the
most hilarious confidence ;—Erasmus
—latitudinarian and philosophical in
religious opinion, with a strong percep-

Long Vacation Readings.

[ December,

tion of both sides of any question, in-
different or at least hopeless as to exact
truth, and with a consequently keen
dislike of all dogmatic exaggerations,
orthodox or otherwise—well informed
in theology, but without any very living
and powerful faith, cool, cautious,
subtle, and refined, more anxious to
expose a sophism, or point a barb at
some folly, than to fight manfully
against error and sin. It was impos-
sible that any hearty harmony could
long subsist between two men of such
a different spirit, and having such diffe-
rent aims. To do Erasmus justice, it
must be remembered that his opposition
to the Papacy had never been dogmatic,
but merely critical ; he desired literary
freedom and a certain measure of re-
ligious freedom; he hated monkery ;
but he had no new opinions or ‘ truths’
for which to contend earnestly, as for
life or death. He was content to accept
the Catholic tradition if it would not
disturb him ; and the Catholic system,
with its historic memories and proud
associations, was dear to his cultivated
imagination and taste. It is needless
to blame Erasmus for his moderation ;
we might as well blame him for not
being Luther. He did his own work
just as Luther did his; and although
we can never compare his character, in
depth, and power, and reality of moral
greatness, with that of the reformer,
neither do we see in it the same exagge-
rations and intolerance that offend
many in Luther.

Here is a delightful glimpse into
the domestic circle of the German
reformer :

It is impossible to conceive a more
simple and beautiful picture of domestic
life than in the letters and table-talk of
Luther henceforth. There is a richer
charm and tenderness and pathos in his
whole existence, —rather enhanced than
otherwise by the slight glimpses we get
of the fact that Catherine had a spirit
and will of her own, and that while she
greatly loved and reverenced the Doctor,
she nevertheless took her own way in
such things as seemed good to her.
Some of the names under which he
delights to address her seem to point to
this little element of imperiousness,
though in such a frank and merry way
as to show that it was a well under-
stood subject of banter between them,
and nothing more. ‘My Lord Kate,’
‘My Emperor Kate,’ are some of his
titles ; and again, in a more circum-
locutory humour, ‘for the hands of the
rich dame of Zuhlsdorf, Doctoress Cathe-
rine Luther:’ sometimes simply and
familiarly ‘Kate my rib.’ Nowhere
does his genial nature overflow more
than in these letters, running riot in all

1859.]

sorts of freakish extravagance, yet
everywhere touched with the deep
mellow light of a healthy and happy
affection, What a pleasant glimpse
and sly humour in the following :—‘ In
the first year of our marriage my Cathe-
rine was wont to seat herself beside me
whilst I was studying ; and once not
having what else to say, she asked me,
“Sir Doctor! in Russia is not the maitre
@hétel the brother of the Margrave ?’’’
And again, in the last year of his life,
and when he is on that journey of
friendliness and benevolence from which
he is never to return to his dear house-
hold, the old spirit of wild fun and
tender affection survives. He writes to
his ‘heart-loved housewife Catherine
Lutherinn, Doctoress Zulsdorferess,
Sow Marketress, and whatever more
she may be, grace and peace in Christ,
and my old poor love in the first place.’
* 2 * .

The birth of his eldest son was an
event of immense interest to the re-
former. ‘I have received,’ he writes
to Spalatin, ‘from my most excellent
and dearest wife a little Luther, by
God’s wonderful mercy. Pray for me
that Christ will preserve my child from
Satan, who, I know, will try all that
he can to harm mein him.’ And then
again, in answer to Spalatin’s good
wishes, and in reference to his own
hopes of the same character, ‘John,
my fawn, together with my doe, return
their warm thanks for your kind bene-
diction ; and may your doe present you
with just such another fawn, on whom
I may ask God’s blessing in turn,
Amen.’ As the little fellow grows and
is about a year old, he writes to
Agricola, ‘My Johnny is lively and
strong, and a voracious, bibacious little
fellow.’

It was to this son that he wrote,
when stationed at Coburg during the
Diet of Augsburg, that most beautiful
and touching of all child-letters that ever
was written. ‘Mercyandpeacein Christ,
my dear little son. I am glad to hear
that you learn your lessons well and
pray diligently. Go on doing so, my
child. When I come home I will bring
you a pretty fairing. I know a very
pretty pleasant garden, and in it there
are a great many children, all dressed
in little golden coats, picking up nice
apples, and pears, and cherries, and
plums, under the trees. And they sing
and jump about and are very merry ;
and besides, they have got beautiful
little horses with golden bridles and
silver saddles. Then I asked the man
to whom the garden belonged, whose
children they were, and he said, “These
are children who love to pray and learn
their lessons, and do as they are bid ;”

Luther's Domestic Circle.

then I said, ‘‘ Dear sir, I have a little
son called Johnny Luther ; may he
come into this garden too?’ And the
man said, “If he loves to pray, and
learn his lessons, and is good, he may ;
and Philip and Joetoo.”’ And so on
in the same tender and beautiful strain,
mixing the highest counsel and richest
poetry with the most child-like interest.
Only a very sound and healthy spirit
could have preserved thus fresh and
simple the flow of natural feeling amid
the hardening contests of the world,
and the arid subtleties of theological
controversy.

The contrast between the German
and Gallic reformers is enforced in
a passage of great beauty :

Altogether, it is sufficiently easy to
fix the varying characteristics, however
difficult it may be to measure the rela-
tive greatness of the two chief re-
formers: moral and intellectual power
assumes in the one an intense, concen-
trated, and severe outline,—in the
other, a broad, irregular, and massive,
yet childlike expression. The one may
suggest a Doric column, chaste, grand,
and sublime in the very simplicity and
inflexibility of its mouldings ; the other
a Gothic dome, with its fertile contrasts
and ample space, here shadowy in lurk-
ing gloom, and there riant in spots of
sunshine, filled through all its ampli-
tude with a dim religious awe, and yet,
as we leisurely pause and survey it,
traced here and there with grotesque
and capricious imagery—the riotous
freaks, as it were, of a strength which
could be at once lofty and low, spiritu-
ally grand, yet with marks of its earth-
birth everywhere.

* * * *

Thereare nowhere inall Calvin’sletters
any joyous or pathetic exaggerations of
sentiment—any of that play of feeling
or of language which in Luther’s letters
make us so love the man. All this he
would have thought mere waste of
breath—mere idleness, for which he
had no time. The intensity of his pur-
pose, the solemnity of his work, pre-
vented him from ever looking around
or relaxing himself in a free, happy,
and outgoing communion with nature
or life. Living as he did amid the
most divine aspects of nature, you
could not tell from his correspondence
that they ever touched him—that morn-
ing with its golden glories, or evening
with its softened splendours, as day
rose and set amid such transporting
scenes, ever inspired him. The mur-
muring rush of the Rhone, the frowning
outlines of the Jura, the snowy grandeur
of Mont Blanc, might as well not have
been, for all that they seemed to have
affected him. No vestige of poetical

680

feeling, no touch of descriptive colour,
ever rewards the patient reader. All
that exquisitely conscious sympathy
with nature, and wavering responsive-
ness to its unuttered lessons, which
brighten with an ever-recurring fresh-
ness the long pages of Luther's letters,
and which have wrought themselves as
a@ very commonplace into modern lite-
rature, is unknown, and would have
been unintelligible to him. And no
less all that fertile interest in life merely
for its own sake—its own joys and
sorrows—brightness and sadness ; the
mystery, pathos, tenderness, and ex-
uberance of mere human affection,
which enrich the character of the great
German—there is nothing of all this in
Calvin—no such yearning or senti-
mental aspirations ever touched him.
Luther, in all things greater as a man,
is infinitely greater here. And in truth
this element of modern feeling and
culture is Teutonic rather than Celtic
in its growth. It springs out of the
comparatively rich and genial soil of
the Saxon mind,—deeper in its sensi-
bilities and more exuberant in its pro-
ducts.

The Church of England:

The spirit of this Church is not, and
never has been, definite and consistent.
From the beginning it repudiated the
distinct guidance of any theoretical
principles, however exalted, and appa-
rently Scriptural. It held fast to its
historical position, as a great Institute
still living and powerful under all the
corruptions which had overlaid it ; and
while submitting to the irresistible in-
fluence of reform which swept over it,
as over other churches in the sixteenth
century, it refused to be refashioned
according to any new model, It broke
away from the medieval bondage, under
which it had always been restless, and
destroyed the gross abuses which had
sprung out of it; it rose in an attitude
of proud and successful resistance to
Rome ; but in doing all this, it did not
go to Scripture, as if it had once more,
and entirely anew, to find there the
principles either of doctrinal truth or of
practical government and discipline.
Scripture, indeed, was eminently the
condition of its revival; but Scripture
was not made anew the foundation of
its existence, There was too much of
old historical life in it to seek any new
foundation ; the new must grow out of
the old, and fit itself into the old. The
Church of England was to be reformed,
but not reconstituted. Its life was too
vast, its influence too varied, its rela-
tions too complicated,—touching the
national existence in all its multiplied
expressions at too many points,—to be

Long Vacation Readings.

[ December,

capable of being reduced to any new
and definite form in more supposed
uniformity with the model of Scripture,
or the simplicity of the primitive
Church. Its extensive and manifold
organism was to be reanimated by a new
life, but not remoulded according to any
arbitrary or novel theory.

This spirit, at once progressive and
conservative, comprehensive rather than
intensive, historical, and not dogmatical,
is one eminently characteristic of the
English mind, and, as it appears to us,
in the highest degree characteristic of
the English Reformation. It is far,
indeed, from being an exhaustive cha-
racteristic of it. Two distinct ten-
dencies of a quite different character,
expressly dogmatic in opposite extremes,
are found running alongside this main
and central tendency : on the one hand,
a medieval dogmatism; on the other
hand, a puritanical dogmatism. The
current of religious life in England, as
it moved forward and took shape in the
sixteenth century, is marked by this
threefold bias, which has perpetuated
itself to the present time. There was
then, as there remains to this day, an
upper, middle, and lower tendency—
a theory of High-churchism, and a
theory of Low-churchism—and between
these contending dogmatic movements
the great confluence of what was and
is the peculiar type of English Chris-
tianity—a Christianity diffusive and
practical rather than direct and theo-
retical—elevated and sympathetic rather
than zealous and energetic—Scriptural
and earnest in its spirit, but undogmatic
and adaptive in its form.

Nothing, we think, can be better
than this on Latimer :

A simplicity everywhere verging on
originality is perhaps his most promi-
nent characteristic—a simplicity as far
as possible from that which we noted
in Calvin: the one, the naked energy
of intellect ; the other, a guileless even-
ness of heart. The single way in which
Latimer looks at life, with his eyes un-
blinded by conventional drapery of any
kind, and his heart responsive to all its
broadest and most common interests,—
of which he speaks in language never
nice and circumlocutory, but straight,
plain, and forcible,—gives to his ser-
mons their singular air of reality, and
to his character that sort of piquancy
which we at once recognise as a direct
birth of nature. He is a kind of Gold-
smith in theology ; the same artless and
winning earnestness—the same sunny
temper in the midst of all difficulties—
the same disregard of his own comforts,
and warm and kindly individualism of
benevolence—the same bright and play-

1859.]

ful humour, like a roving and gleeful
presence, meeting you at every turn,
and flashing laughter in your face. It
would be absurd, of course, to push this
comparison further. There is beneath
all the oddities of Latimer’s character
a deep and even stern consistency of
purpose, and a spirit of righteous in-
dignation against wrong, which, apart
from all dissimilarities of work, destroys
any more essential analogy between the
great humourist of the Reformation in
England and the later humourist of its
literature. Yet the same childlike
transparency of character is beheld in
both, and the same fresh stamp of
nature, which, in its simple originality,
is found to outlast far more brilliant
and imposing, but artificially cultured
qualities,

In mere intellectual strength, Latimer
can take no place beside either Luther
or Calvin, His mindhasneithertherich
compass of the one, nor the symmetrical
vigour of the other. He is no master
in any department of intellectual inte-
rest, or even of theological inquiry.
We read his sermons, not for any light
or reach of truth which they unfold, nor
because they exhibit any peculiar depth
of spiritual apprehension, but simply
because they are interesting—and inte-
resting mainly from the very absence of
all dogmatic or intellectual pretensions.
Yet, without any mental greatness,
there is a pleasant and wholesome har-
mony of mental powers displayed in his
writings, which gives to them a won-
derful vitality. There is a proportion
and vigour, not of logic, but of sense
and feeling in them eminently English,
and showing everywhere a high and
well-toned capacity. He is coarse and
low at times; his familiarity occa-
sionally descends to meanness ; but the
living hold ‘which he takes of reality at
every point often carries him also to
the height of an indignant and burning
eloquence.

But we must stay our hand; and

the quotations we have made are
sufficient to show that this unpre-
tending little volume contains much
ripe thought and felicitous criticism,
and that it merits a very hearty
welcome from all who esteem
honesty, independence, and—‘ the
greatest of these ’—charity.

I have said that the presence of
men like Principal Tulloch in the
National Church is a hopeful sign.
That Scottish Presbyterianism, how-

A Case of Presbyterian Intolerance.

681

ever, is not yet free from the taint
of intolerance is forcibly illustrated
by a couple of pamphlets * I have
received since this paper was begun.
The matter of which they treat is,
in its immediate consequences, of
local interest only ; but the questions
involved are of first-rate and even
national importance. The principles
of religious toleration have now been
formally sanctioned by the State,
but a vast amount of social and
domestic bigotry survives. These,
the more subtle forms of perse-
cution, are by their nature the most
difficult to combat; they are the
concealed and impalpable sores on
which the free ae of public
opinion can seldom be brought to
bear. It is all the more necessary,
therefore, than when an act of this
kind, directly opposed to the spirit
of our recent legislation and to the
maxims of an enlightened Pro-
testantism, does by accident emerge
into the daylight, that it should be
strongly and summarily dealt with
by those who watch and guard with
jealous reverence the spiritual rights
of the people. .

The circumstances of this case
may be briefly stated. The ma-
nagers of the Crichton Royal In-
stitution at Dumfries—an institution
for the care and cure of the insane—
appointed in the beginning of this
year an assistant-matron to one of
their establishments. At the time
the appointment was made, they
were informed that the lady elected
was a Roman Catholic. She was
admirably qualified in every other
respect for the situation ; and as the
Crichton Institution is a national
and unsectarian establishment, and
as the duty of the matron has re-
ference to the temporal comfort and
not to the spiritual well-being of the
inmates, her religious belief was not
considered nor allowed to operate as
a disqualification. A Roman Ca-
tholic had held the same situation
previously ; a Roman Catholic gen-
tleman was among the directors.
The lady continued matron for some
months, and discharged her duties
to the perfect satisfaction of her
employers. Unluckily, however,

- Religious Intolerance, &c. By the Honourable Marmaduke ©. Maxwell.

Edinburgh. 1859.

A Letter to the Honourable Marmaduke C. Maxwell, &c.

Stevenson, D.D. Edinburgh. 1859.

*

By the Rev. W.

682

certain meddling clergymen in the
metropolis learned that such an ap-
intment had been made, and the
orthwith moved heaven and eart:
to get it annulled. A protest, con-
ceived in the most extravagant and
bombastic vein, was drawn up by
the reverend agitators, and exten-
sively signed by their friends. The
directors were alarmed by the vio-
lent measures which it threatened ;
they retraced their steps and dis-
charged their official. A minorit
of their number at once resigned,
and one of them, the Hon. Marma-
duke Maxwell, has now made public
the particulars of a shameful and
disgraceful intrigue.

The Rey. Dr. Stevenson, of Leith,
who seems to have taken the lead-
ing part in the agitation, has at-
tempted to vindicate the meddling
of his clerical brethren in a matter
with which they had no earthly
concern. His pamphlet is worth
reading; it will be considered a
curiosity south of the Tweed, for its
interpretation of the doctrines of
Protestant freedom is certainly
unique. Any argument it contains
is either utterly worthless or
curiously disingenuous. Proceeding
upon the assumption that the Crich-
ton Institution is ‘a Protestant
asylum’—as if Protestants only
were in the habit of going out of
their wits—it argues that it is in-
competent to appoint a Roman
Catholic matron. The assumption
is perfectly unwarranted. The sta-
tute of incorporation, acts of Parlia-
ment which recognise the asylum,
do not say a single word on the
subject of religion; no test is en-
forced, no disabilities are imposed ;
the institution is a public one, open
to patients of every creed and sect.
But Dr. Stevenson will make him-
self superior to the Legislature. No
Roman Catholic matron, no Baptist

Long Vacation Readings.

[December,

nurse, no Episcopalian housemaid,
need apply at Dumfries so long as
this vindicator of Presbyterian pu-
rity can wield a pen or draw a
protest.

I noticed in an advertisement the
other day that the applicant—a
clergyman—after enumerating his
other qualifications, added in con-
spicuous type, ‘Views strictly those
of Simeon.’ It might perhaps have
been as assuring if he had stated
that his views were ‘strictly those
of St. Paul;’ but certain party
shibboleths are, I presume, neces-
sary in the Church. If the Leith
Doctor's system of domestic disa-
bilities, however, is to be carried
out, it is difficult to see where we
are to stop. We shall have our
scullery maids disclaiming, through
the medium of the public press, any
connexion with St. Barnabas; and
Mrs. Gamp*deponing on her ‘mortial
oath’ that her religious convictions
are ‘ strictly those of Calvin.’ Dean
Ramsay, in his quaint, genial, and
racy Reminiscences, tells a story of
an old Scotch maiden lady resident
in a provincial town, which must
have cruelly shocked Dr. Steven-
son :—

A very strong-minded lady of the
class, and in Lord Cockburn’s language,
‘indifferent about modes and habits,’
had been asking from a lady the charac-
ter of a cook she was about to hire.
The lady naturally entered a little
upon her moral qualifications, and de-
scribed her as a very decent woman ;
the reply to which was, ‘Oh, d—n her
decency ; can she make good collops ?
—an answer which would somewhat
surprise a lady of Moray-place now if
engaged in a similar discussion of a
servant's merits.

This is going a little too far the
other way, no doubt; though the
strong masculine shrewdness, and
the vigorous contempt for what she

* Mrs. Gamp, to do her justice, has stated with great simplicity her Confession
of Faith :—
‘Ah, dear!’ moaned Mrs. Gamp, sinking into the shaving chair, ‘that there

blessed Bull, Mr. Sweedlepipe, has done his wery best to conker me.

Of all the

trying inwalieges in this wally of the shadder, that one beats ’em black and blue.

Talk of constitooshun !

A person’s constitooshun need be made of bricks to stand

it. Mrs, Harris jestly says to me but t’other day, ‘‘Oh! Sairey Gamp,” she says,

“how is it done?” ‘Mrs. H

arris, ma'am,” I says to her, “we gives no trust

ourselves, and puts a deal o’ trust elsevere; these is our religious feelin’s, and

we finds ’em answer.”
ways is the hend of all things !”’

‘“‘Sairey,” says Mrs. Harris, ‘‘sech is life.

Vich like-

t Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character. By E. B. Ramsay, M.A.,

Dean of Edinburgh. Fourth Edition.

Edinburgh.

1859.

1859.]

evidently considered a piece of effe-
minate fastidiousness, are very re-
freshing. But when we are required
to discharge the nurse from our hos-
ital, or the cook from our kitchen,
cause her views on consubstantia-
tion are unsettled, then we empha-
tically concur in the old lady’s
hearty sentiment—‘Oh, d—n her
eee) can she make good
collops P’

It would be utterly unprofitable
to follow Dr. Stevenson through
his very oratorical and irrelevant
defence. A man who sneers at the
plainest maxims of civil and religious
freedom as ‘the commonplace pla-
titudes of liberalism,’ and at their
application as dictated by ‘a weak
and almost maudlin sentiment,’ is
clearly beyond the pale of argument.
But fortunately the form which his
intolerance has assumed in this in-
stance is one of which the public
authorities can take cognisance. By
the recent Lunacy Act the Crichton
institution is placed under the
supervision of the Government In-
spectors. These gentlemen will not
perform their duties to the satis-
faction of the public unless in their
annual report they bring under the
notice of the Home Secretary (and
thereby enable him to redress) a
grave wrong and @ gross injustice.

* *

But even on a stormy day like
this the sea-side is not altogether
destitute of out-door interest.

A ship in sight! Let us put away

our books and hurry down to the
pier. Thalatta! Thalatta! But it
is not ‘the many-dimpled smile’—
ampOpov yeAaopa—that greets us
this October afternoon; the lion-
like monster has been roused from
his summer slumber, and now lashes
his tawny mane. "Tis an awful day!
The bay is crossed with crested
billows; the white skua gulls are
screaming over the uptorn tangle
which the sea has cast on the beach ;
a troubled gleam of rainbow touches
the troubled water and the slate-
coloured cloud of rain in the offing.
On the grey edges of the driven
sleet, dimly visible through it, a
large barque rushes on before the
blast. She has beat about the ho-
rizon the whole morning, but can-
not weather the Burrough Head,
and now—unable to live the night

A Stormy Day at the Sea-side.

683

out yonder—makes straight for the
harbour mouth. ’Tis her last chance,
and she needs must haste, for in
another hour the retreating tide will
shallow the channel, and strand her
upon its beach. There,—you see
her clearly now. A great Dutch
barque—heavy and unwieldy—her
rain-beaten sails sadly tattered—a
red flag flying at her mizzen. On
she comes with Dutch-like delibera-
tion, yawing over the swell as if
she would shake every timber in
her to bits, and each moment
nearing the white surf that breaks
upon the bar. That is the point of
danger. The bar is close outside
the harbour mouth, and one after
the other the great waves—moun-
tains of water that tower up high
over the pier, and seem to drain the
sea to its bottom—burst with a
thundering boom upon it.

‘He’s keepin’ ower far to lee-
’ard,’ says one nautical-looking old
bird. ‘ He'll land her on the back
o’ the pier.’

‘Up with your top-gallantsail,
man,’ shouts another with an oath,
as if he expected the skipper out
there in ihe tempest to hear him.
‘Clap on every rag you have, you
ould idiot ;’ and he uses his arms
like a pair of flails, to indicate what
is needed.

The hint is taken, the topsail is
slowly unfurled, and the barque,
with Lettee ‘way’ upon it, keeps up
gallantly through the surf. As a
mere matter of speculative curiosity
the spectators, I dare say, would
have wished to witness the effect
which the billow that has just now
broken like a cataract would have
had upon her; but the steersman,
who with some half dozen bearded
Finns is now visible on the deck, has
handled his tools well, and brings
her rolling in upon the monster's
back. Then.there isa brief interval
of calm—thirty seconds or so—and
before the next ‘ sea’ breaks, a cheer
has greeted the drenched crew, and
the storm-beaten is within shelter
of the pier.

I see, my dear Editor, that you
wax impatient. Very reasonably,
I admit. But only consider, as
ad Heine says, ‘if this paper

res you to read it, how it must
have bored me to write it.’ Be
merciful accordingly. Fuge et vale.

SHIRLEY.

684

HOLMBY HOUSE:
A Cale of Old Northamptonshire.

BY G. J. WHYTE MELVILLE,
AUTHOR OF ‘DIGBY GRAND, ‘THE INTERPRETER, ETC,

Cuartrer X XXIII.
‘THE BEACON AFAR.’

*‘T,BENEZER the Gideonite’

was no bad specimen of the
class he represented—the sour-
visaged, stern, and desperate fanatic,
who allowed no consideration of
fear or mercy to turn him from the
path of duty; whose sense of per-
sonal danger as of personal respon-
sibility was completely swallowed
up in his religious enthusiasm ;
who would follow such an officer as
George Effingham into the very
jaws of death; and of whom such a
man as Cromwell knew how to make
a rare and efficient instrument.
Ebenezer’s orders were to hold no
communication with his prisoner,
to neglect no precaution for his
security; and having reported his
capture to the general in command
at Northampton, to proceed at least
one stage farther on his road to
London ere he halted for the
night.

Humphrey’s very name ‘was con-
sequently unknown to the party
who had him incharge. As he had
no papers whatever upon his person
when captured, the subaltern in
command of the picket at Brixworth
had considered it useless to ask a
question to which it was so easy to
give a fictitious answer; apd Ebe-
nezer, although recognising him
a eed as an old acquaintance,

ad neglected to ascertain his name
even after their first introduction
by means of the flat of the Cavalier’s
sabre. Though his back had tingled
for weeks from the effects of a blow
so shrewdly administered; though
he had every opportunity of learn-
ing the style and title of the prisoner
whom he had helped to bring before
Cromwell at his head-quarters ; yet,
with an idiosyncrasy peculiar to the
British soldier, and a degree of
Saxon indifference amounting to
stupidity, he had never once thought
of making inquiry as to who or what
was this hard-hitting Malignant
that had so nearly knocked him off

his horse in the Gloucestershire
lane.

Erect and vigilant, he rode con-
scientiously close to his prisoner,
eyeing him from time to time with
looks of curiosity and interest, and
scanning his figure from head to
heel with obvious satisfaction. Not
a word, however, did he address to
the captive; his conversation, such
as it was, being limited to a few
brief sentences interchanged with
his men, in which Scriptural phrase-
ology was strangely intermingled
with the language of the stable and
the parade-ground. Strict as was
the discipline insisted on amongst
the Parliamentary troops by Crom-
well and his officers, the escort, as
may be pees followed the ex-
ample of their superior with stern
faces and silent tongues; they rode
at ‘ attention,’ their horses well in
hand, their weapons held in readi-
ness, and their eyes never for an
instant taken off the horseman they
surrounded.

Humphrey, we may easily ima-
gine, was in no mood to enter into
conversation. He had _ indeed
enough food for sad forebodings and
bitter reflections. Wild and adven-
turous as had been his life for many
weeks past—always in disguise,
always apparently on the eve of
discovery, and dependent for his
safety on the fidelity of utter stran-
gers, often of the meanest class—
not a day had elapsed without some
imminent hazard, some thrilling al-
ternation of hope and fear. But
the events of the last few hours had
outdone them all. ‘To have suc-
ceeded in his mission !—to have es-
caped when escape seemed impos-
sible, and then to fail at the last
moment, when safety had been
actually gained!—it seemed more
sike some wild and feverish dream
than a dark hopeless reality. And
the poor sorrel! How sincerely he
mourned for the good horse; how

Y

Fs PF oO SV ere 5

Qa =~

ct

s
n
e
n

1859. ] Humphrey Bosville a Prisoner. 685

well he had always carried him;
how gentle and gallant and obedient
he was; how he turned to his mas-
ter’s hand and sprang to his master’s
voice. How fond he was of him;
and to think of him lying dead
pe by the water-side! It was
ard to bear.

Strange how a dumb animal can
wind itself round the human heart!
What associations may be connected
with a horse’s arching crest or the
intelligent glance of a dog’s eye.
How they can bring back to us the
happy ‘long, long ago;’ the magic
time that seems brighter and
brighter as we contemplate it from
a greater and greater distance;
how they can recal the soft tones
and kindly glances that are hushed,
perhaps, and dim for evermore ;
perhaps, the bitterest stroke of all,
estranged and altered now. ‘Love
me, love my dog !’—there never was
a truer proverb. Aye! love my dog,
love my horse, love all that came
about me; the dress I wore, the
words I have spoken, the very
ground I trod upon,—but do not be
surprised that horse and dog, and
dress and belongings, all are still
the same, and I alone am changed.

So Humphrey loved the sorrel,
and grieved for him sincerely. The
rough Puritan soldiers could under-
stand his dejection. Many a char-
ger’s neck was caressed by a rough
hand on the march, as the scene by
the Northern Water presented itself
vividly to the dragoons’ untutored
minds; and though the vigilance of
his guardians was unimpeachable,
their bearing towards Humphrey
was all the softer and more deferen-
tial that these veteran soldiers could
appreciate his feelings and sympa-
thize with his loss.

He had but one drop of comfort,
one gleam of sunshine now, and
even that was dashed with bitter
feelings of pique and a conscious-
ness of unmerited neglect. He had
seen Mary once again. He liked to
think, too, that she must have re-
cognised him ; must have been aware
of his critical position; must have
a that he was being led off to

ie.

* Perhaps even her hard heart will
ache,’ thought the prisoner, ‘when
she thinks of her handiwork. Was
it not for her sake that I undertook

this fatal duty—for her sake that I
have spent years of my life in exile,
risked that life ungrudgingly a
thousand times, and shall now for-
feit it most unquestionably to the
vengeance of the Parhament ?
Surely, surely, if she is a woman,
she must be anxious and unhappy
now.’

It was a strange morbid sensation,
half of anger, half of triumph; yet
through it all a tear stole to his eye
from the fond heart that could not
bear to think the woman he loved
should suffer a moment’s uneasiness
even for his sake.

Silently they rode on till they
reached Northampton town. The
good citizens were too much inured
to scenes of violence, too well
accustomed to the presence of the
Parliamentary troops, to throw
away much attention on so simple
an event as the arrival of an escort
with a prisoner. Party-feeling, too,
had become considerably weakened
since the continued successes of the
Parliament. Virtually the war was
over, and the Commons now repre-
sented the governing power through-
outthe country. The honest towns-
men of Northampton were only too
thankful to obtain a short interval
of peace and quiet for the prose-
cution of ‘ business’—that magic
word, which speaks so eloquently to
the feelings of the middle class in
England—and as their majority had
from the very commencement of the
disturbances taken the popular side
in the great civil contest, they could
afford to treat their fallen foes with
mercy and consideration. :

Unlike his entry on a previous
occasion into the good city of
Gloucester, Humphrey found his
present plight the object neither of
ridicule nor remark. The passers-
by scarce glanced at him as he rode
nan and the escort closed round
him so vigilantly that a careless ob-
server would hardly have remarked
that the troop encircled a prisoner.

In consequence of their meditated
movement againstthe King’s liberty,
the Parliament had concentrated a
large force of all arms at Northamp-
ton, and the usually smiling and
peaceful town presented the ap-
pearance of enormous barracks.
Granaries, manufactories, and other

large buildings were taken up for

686 Holmby House: a Tale of Old Northamptonshire. (December,

the use of soldiers; troop-horses
were picketed ‘in the streets, and a
ark of artillery occupied the mar-
cet-place ; whilst the best houses of
the citizens, somewhat to the dis-
satisfaction of their owners, were
appropriated by the superior officers
of the division. In one of the largest
of these George Effingham had es-
tablished himself. An air of military
simplicity and discipline pervaded
the general’s quarters: sentries,
steady and immoveable as statues,
guarded the entrance; a strong
escort of cavalry occupied an ad-
joining building, once « flour-store,
now converted into a guard-house.
Grave upright personages, distin-
guished by their orange scarfs as
officers of the Parliament, stalked
to and fro, intent on military affairs,
here bringing in their reports, there
issuing forth charged with orders ;
but one and all affecting an austerity
of demeanour which yet somehow
sat unnaturally upon buff coat and
steel head-piece. The general him-
self seemed immersed in business.
Seated at a table covered with

papers, he wrote with unflinching
energy, looking up, it is true, ever
and anon with a weary abstracted

air, but returning to his work with
renewed vigour after every inter-
ruption, as though determined by
sheer force of will to keep his mind
from wandering off its task.

An orderly-sergeant entered the
room, and, standing at ‘ attention,’
announced the arrival of an escort
with a prisoner.

The general looked up for a mo-
ment from his papers. ‘Send in the
officer in command to make his re-
port,’ said he, and resumed his
occupation.

Ebenezer stalked solemnly into
the apartment: gaunt and grim, he
stood bolt eprignt and commenced
his — aie

‘1 may not tarry the way,
gunned," he began, ‘for verily the
time is short and the night cometh
in which no man can work; even
as the day of grace, which passeth
like the shadow on the sun-dial ere
a man can say, Lo! here it cometh,
or lo! there.

Effingham cut him short with
considerable impatience. ‘ Speak
out, man,’ he exclaimed, ‘ and say
what thou’st got to say, with a

murrain to thee! Dost think I have
nought to do but sit here and listen
to the prating of thy fool’s tongue ?”

Ebenezer was one of those —
ing men-of-war who never let slip
an opportunity of what they termed
‘improving the occasion ;’ but our
friend George’s temper, which the
unhappiness and uncertainty of the
last few years had not tended to
sweeten, was by no means proof
against such an infliction. The sub-
ordinate perceived this, and endea-
voured to condense his communica-
tion within the bounds of military
brevity, but the habit was too strong
for him: after a few sentences he
broke out again—

‘I was ordered by Lieutenant
Allgood to select an escort of eight
picked men and horses, and pro-
ceed in charge of a prisoner to Lon-
don. My instructions were to pass
through Northampton, reporting
myself to General Effingham by
the way, and to push on a stage
further without delay ere I halted
my party for the night. With re-
gard to the prisoner, the captive,
as indeed I may say, of our bow
and spear, who fell a prey to us
under Brixworth, even as a bird
falleth a prey to the fowler, and
who trusted in the speed of his
horse to save him in the day of
wrath, as these Malignants Ban
ever trusted in their snortings and
their prancings, forgetting that it
hath been said—’

‘Go to the devil, sir!’ exclaimed
George Effingham, with an energy
of impatience that completely dis-
sipated the thread of the worthy
sergeant’s discourse ; ‘are you to
take up my time standing preach-
ing there, instead of attending to
your duty? Youhave your orders,
sir; be off, and comply with them.
Your horses are fresh, your journey
before you, and the sun going
down. shall take care that the
time of your arrival in London is
reported to me, and woe be to you
if you “tarry by the way,” as you
call it in your ridiculous hypo-
critical jargon. To the right—
face !’

It was a broad hint that in an
orderly-room admitted of but one
interpretation. Ebenezer’s iistincts
as a soldier predominated over his
temptations as an orator, and in

1859.]

less than five minutes he was once
more in the saddle, wary and vigi-
lant, closing his files carefully round
the captured Royalist as they
wound down the stony street in the
direction of the London road.

George Effingham returned to
his writing, and with a simple me-
morandum of the fact that a pri-
soner had been reported to him as
under escort for London, dismissed
the whole subject at once from his
mind.

Thus it came to pass that the two
friends, as still they may be called,
never knew that they were within
a hundred paces of each other,
though in how strange a relative
position; never knew that a chance
word, an incident however trifling,
that had betrayed the name of
either, would have brought them
together, and perhaps altered the
whole subsequent destinies of each.
George never suspected that the
nameless prisoner, reported to him
as a mere matter of form, under
the charge of Ebenezer, was his
old friend Humphrey Bosville ; nor
could the Cavalier «fr guess that
the General of Division holding so
important a command as that of
Northampton, was none other than
his former comrade and captain,
dark George Effingham.

The latter worked hard till night-
fall. It was his custom now. He
seemed never so uneasy as when in
repose. He acted like a traveller
who esteems all time wasted but
that which tends to the accomplish-
ment of his journey. Enjoying the
confidence of Cromwell and the
respect of the whole army, won, inde-
spite of his antecedents, by a career
of cool and determined bravery, he
seemed to be building up for him-
self a high and influential station,
stone by stone as it were, and
grudging no amount of sacrifice, no
exertion to raise it, if only by an
inch. The enthusiasm of George’s
temperament was counterbalanced
by sound judgment and a highly
perspicuous intellect, and conse-
quently the tendency to fanaticism
which had first impelled him to
join the Revolutionary party, had
become considerably modified b
all he saw and heard, when ad-
mitted to the councils of the Par-
liament, and better acquainted with

Effingham a General of Division.

687

their motives and opinions. He no
longer deemed that such men as
Fairfax, Ireton, even Cromwell,
were directly inspired by Heaven,
but he could not conceal from him-
self that their energies and abilities
were calculated to win for them the
high places of theearth. He knew,
moreover, none better, the strength
and the weaknesses of either side,
and he could not doubt for a mo-
ment which must become the domi-
nant party. If not a better, the
ci-devant Cavalier had become un-
questionably a wiser man, and
having determined in his own mind
which of the contending factions
was capable of saving the country,
and which was obviously on the
high road to power, he never now
regretted for an instant that he
had joined its ranks, nor looked
back, as Bosville would have done
under similar circumstances, witha
wistful longing to all the illusions
of romance and chivalry, which
shed a glare over the downfall
of the dashing Cavaliers. Effing-
ham’s, we need hardly say, was a
temperament of extraordinary per-
severance and unconquerable reso-
lution. He had now proposed to
himself a certain aim and end in
life. From the direction which led
to its attainment he never swerved
one inch, as he never halted for an
instant by the way. He had de-
termined to win a high and influen-
tial station. Such a station as
should at once silence all malicious
remarks on his Royalist antece-
dents, as should raise him, if not to
wealth, at least to honour, and
above all, such as should enable
him to throw the shield of his pro-
tection over all and any whom he
should think it worth his while thus
to shelter and defend. Far in the
distance, like some strong swimmer
battling successfully against wind
and tide, he discerned the beacon
which he had resolved to reach, and
though he husbanded his strength
and neglected no advantage of eddy
or back-water, he never relaxed for
an instant from his efforts, con-
vinced that in the moral as in the
physical conflict, he who is not ad-
vancing is necessarily losing way.
Such tenacity of purpose will be
served at last, as indeed it fully
merits to be, and this Saxon quality

688 Holmby House: a Tale of Old Northamptonshire. [December,

Effingham possessed for good or
evil in its most exaggerated form.

The weaknessesof a strong nature,
like the flaws in a marble column,
are, however, a fit subject for ridi-
cule and remark. The general,
despite his grave appearance and
his powerful intellect, was as child-
ish in some matters as his neigh-
bours. Ever since ‘the concentra-
tion of a large Parliamentary force
around Northampton, and the in-
vestment, so to speak, of Holmby
House by the redoubtable Cornet
Joyce, it had been judged advisable
by the authorities to station a strong
detachment of cavalry at the village
of Brixworth, a lonely hamlet within
six miles of head-quarters, occupy-
ing a commanding position, and
with strong capabilities for defence.
This detachment seemed to be the
general's peculiar care; and who
should gainsay such a high military
opinion as that of George Effing-
ham? Whatever might be the

ress of business during the day,
Lewover numerous the calls upon
his time, activity, and resources, he
could always find a spare hour or
two before sundown, in which to
visit this important outpost. Ac-
companied by a solitary dragoon as
an escort, or even at times entirely
alone, the general would gallo
over to beat up Lieutenant All-
good’s quarters, and returning
leisurely in the dark, would dro
the rein on his horse’s neck, an
suffer him to walk quietly through
the outskirts of the park at Bough-
ton, whilst his master looked long
and wistfully at the casket contain-
ing the jewel which he had sternly
resolved to win. On the day of
Humphrey’s capture, the very
eagerness on the part of Effingham
to fulfil his daily duty, or rather,
we should say, to enjoy the only
relaxation he permitted himself,
served to render him somewhat im-
patient of Ebenezer’s long-winded
communications; and by cutting
short the narrative of that verbose
official, perhaps prevented an inter-
view with his old friend, which, had
he believed in its possibility, he
would have been sorry to miss.

A bright moon shone upon the
waving fern and fine old trees of
Boughton Park as George returned
from his customary visit to the out-

post. He was later than usual, and
the soft southern breeze wafted on
his ear the iron tones that were
tolling midnight from Kingsthorpe
Church. All was still, a balmy,
and beautiful, the universe seemed
to breathe of peace, and love, and
repose. The influence of the hour
seemed to soothe and soften the am-
bitious soldier, seemed to saturate
his whole being with kindly, gentle
feelings, far different from those
which habitually held sway in that
weary, careworn heart; seemed to
whisper to him of higher, holier
joys than worldly fame and gratified
pride, even than successful lore—
to urge upon him the beauty of
humility, and self-sacrifice, and
hopeful, child-like trust,—the tri-
umph of that resignation which far
outshines all the splendours of con-
quest, which wrests a victory even
out of the jaws of defeat.

Alas that these momentary im-
pressions should be transient in
proportion to their strength! What
zs this flaw in the human organiza-
tion that thus makes man the very
puppet of a passing thought? Is
there but one rudder that can guide
the bark upon her voyage, veering
as she does with every changing
breeze? but one course that shall
bring her in safety to the desired
haven, when all the false pilots she
is so prone to take on board do but
run her upon shoals and quicksands,
or let her drift aimlessly out sea-
ward though the night? Weknow
where the charts are to be found—
we know where the rudder can be
fitted. Whose fault is it that we can-
not bring our cargo safe home to
port?

The roused deer, alarmed at the
tramp of George’s charger, sprang
hastily from their lair under the
stems of the spreading beeches,
blanched in the moonlight to a
ghastly white. As they coursed
along in single file under the horse’s
nose, he bounded lightly into the
air, and with a snort of pleasure
rather than alarm broke voluntarily
into a canter on the yielding moss-
grown sward. The motion scattered
the train of thought in which his
rider was plunged, dispelled the
charm, and brought him back from
his visions to his own practical, re-
solute self. He glanced once, and

1859.]

once only, at the turrets of the hall,
from which a light was still shining,
dimly visible at a gap in the fine
old avenue; and then with clenched
hand and stern, compressed smile,
turned his horse’s head homeward,
and galloped steadily on towards
his own quarters in Northampton
town.

CHarteR XXXIV.
‘PAST AND GONE.

Perhaps had Effingham known in
whose room was twinkling that
light which shone out at so late an
hour from the towers of the old
manor-house ; could any instinctive
faculty have made him aware of
the council to which it was a silent
witness; could he have guessed at
the solemn conclave held by two
individuals in that apartment, from
which only a closed casement and
a quarter of a mile of avenue sepa-
rated him, even his strong heart
would have beat quicker, and a
sensation of sickening anxiety would
have prevented him from proceed-
ing so resolutely homewards, would
have kept him lingering and han-
kering there the live-long night.

The solitary light was shining
from Grace Allonby’s apartment.
In that luxurious room were the
two ladies, still in full evening cos-
tume. One wasin asitting posture,
the other, with a pale, stony face,
her hair pushed vet from her tem-
ples, cil her lips, usually so red
and ripe, of an ashy white, walked
irregularly to and fro, clasping her
hands together, and twisting the
fingers in and out with the uncon-
scious contortions of acute suffering.
It was Mary Cave who seemed thus
driven to the extremity of apprehen-
sion and dismay. All her dignity,
all her self-possession had deserted
her for the nonce, and left her a
trembling, weeping, harassed, and
afflicted woman.

Grace Allonby, on the other
hand, sate in her chair erect and
motionless as marble. Save for the
action of the little foot beneath her
dress, which tapped the floor at
regular intervals, she might, indeed,
have been a statue, with her fixed
eye, her curved, defiant lip and
dilated nostril expressive of mingled
wrath and scorn.

The Young Ladies in Difficulty.

689

Brought up as sisters, loving each
other with the undemonstrative
affection which dependence on one
side and protection on the other
surely engenders between generous
minds, never before had the demon
of discord been able to sow the
slightest dissension between these
two. Now, however, they seemed
to have changed natures. Mary
was writhing and pleading as for
dear life. Grace sat stern and
pitiless, her dark eyes flashing
fiercely, and her fair brow, usual]
so smooth and om lowering with
an ominous scowl.

For five minutes neither had
spoken a syllable, though Mary
continued her troubled walk up and
down the room. At last Grace,
turning her head haughtily towards
her companion, stiffly observed,

‘You can suggest, then, no other
method than this unwomanly and
humiliating course ?”

‘Dear Grace,’ replied Mary, in
accents of imploring eagerness, ‘ it
is our last resource. I entreat you—
think of the interest at stake. Think
of him even now, a prisoner on his
way to execution. To execution!
Great Heaven! they will never
spare him now. I can see it all
before me—the gallant form walk-
ing erect between those stern, tri-
umphant Puritans, the kindly face
blindfolded, that he may not look
upon his death. I can see him
standing out from those levelled
muskets. I can hear his voice firm
and manly as he defies them all and
shouts his old battle-cry—“ God
and the King!” I can see the
wreaths of white smoke floating
away before the breeze, and down
upon the greensward, Humphrey
Bosville — dead! — do you under-
stand me, girl? dead—stone dead!
and we shall never, never see him
more!’

Mary’s voice rose to a shriek as
she concluded, towering above her
companion in all the majesty of her
despair; but she could not sustain
the horror of the picture she had
conjured up, and sinking into a
chair, she covered her face with her
hands and shook all over like an
aspen leaf.

Grace, too, shuddered visibly.
It was in a softened tone that she
said, ‘He must be saved, Mary. I

690 Holmby Howse: a Tale of Old Northamptonshire. [December,

am willing to do all that lies in my
power. He shall not die for his
loyalty if he can be rescued by
any one that bears the name of
Allonby.’

‘Bless you, darling, a thousand,
thousand times!’ exclaimed Mary,
seizing her friend’s hand and cover-
ing it with kisses; ‘I knew your
good, kind heart would triumph at
the last. I knew you would never
leave him to die without stretching
an arm to help him. Listen, Gracey.
There is but one person that can
interpose with any chance of suc-
cess on his behalf—I need not tell
you again who that person is,
Gracey ; you used to praise and ad-
mire my knowledge of the world,
you used to place the utmost faith
in my clearsightedness and quick-
ness of perception; Iam not easily
deceived, and I tell you George
Effingham loves the very ground
beneath your feet. Not as men
usually love, Grace, with a divided
interest, that makes a hawk or a
hound, a place-at. court, or a brigade
of cavalry, too dangerous and suc-
cessful a rival, but with all the
energy of his whole enthusiastic
nature, with the reckless devotion
that would fling the world, if he
had it, at your feet. He is your
slave, dear, and I cannot wonder at
it. For your lightest whim he
would do more, a thousand times
more, than this. He has influence
with our rulers (it is a bitter drop
in the cup, that we must term the
Roundhead knaves owr rulers at
last) ; above all, he has Cromwell’s
confidence, and Cromwell governs
England now.#If he can be pre-
vailed on to exert himself, he
can save Bosville’s life. It is much
to ask him, I grant you. It may
compromise him with his party, it
may give his enemies the means of
depriving him of his command, it
may ruin the whole future on which
his great ambitious mind is set. I
know him, you see, dear, though he
has never thought it worth his
while to open his heart to me; it
might even endanger his safety at
a future period, but it must be done,
Grace, and you are the person that
must tell him to do it.’

‘It is not right,’ answered Grace,
her feminine pride rousing itself
once more. ‘It is not just or fair.

What can I give him in ex e
for such a favour? How an tt
all the women upon earth, ask him
to do this for me ?’

‘And yet, Grace, if you refuse,
Humphrey must die!’ said Mary,
in the quiet tones of despair, but
with a writhing lip that could hardly
utter the fatal word.

Grace was driven from her de-
fences now. Conflicting feelings,
reserve, pride, pity, and affection, all
were at war in that soft heart, which
so few years ago had scarcely known
a pang. Like a true woman, she
adopted the last unfailing resource,
she put herself into a passion and
burst into tears.

* Why am I to do all this?’ sob-
bed Grace. ‘Why are my father,
and Lord Vaux, and you yourself,
Mary, to do nothing, and I alone
to interfere? What especial claim
has Humphrey on me? What
right have I more than others over
the person of Major Bosville ?”

‘Because you love him, Grace,’
answered Mary, and her eye never
wavered, her voice never faltered
when she said it. The stony look
had stolen over her face once more,
and the rigidity of the full white
arm that peeped through her sleeve
showed how tight her hand was
clenched, but the woman herself
was as steady as arock. The other
turned her eyes away from the
quiet searching glance that was
reading her heart.

‘ And if I did,’ said poor Grace, in
the petereme of her distress, ‘I
should not be the only person.
You like him yourself, Mary, you
know you do—am I to save him for
your sake?’

The girl laughed in bitter scorn
while she spoke, but tears of shame
and contrition rose to her eyes a
moment afterwards, as she reflected
on the ungenerous words she had
spoken.

Mary had long nerved herself
for the task, she was not going to
fail now. She had resolved to give
him up. Three little simple words;
very easy to say, and comprising
after all—what? a mere nothing!
only a heart’s happiness lost for a
life-time—only a me over the sun
for evermore—only the destruction
of hope, and energy, and all that
makes life worth having, and dis-

1859.]

tinguishes the intellectual being
from the brute. Only the exchange
of a future to pray for, and dream
of, for a listless despair, torpid and
benumbed—fearing nothing, caring
for nothing, and welcoming nothing
but the stroke that shall end life
and sufferings together. This was
all. She would not flinch—she was
resolved—she could do it easily.

‘Listen to me, Grace,’ she said,
speaking every word quite slowly
and distinctly, though her very eye-
brows quivered with the violence
she did her feelings, and she was
obliged to grasp the arm of a chair
to keep the ama trembling fingers
still. ‘You are mistaken if you
think I have any sentiment of re-
gard for Major Bosville deeper than
friendship and esteem. I have long
known him, and appreciated his
good qualities. You yourself must
acknowledge how intimately allied
we have all been in the war, and
how stanch and faithful he has
ever proved himself to the King.
Therefore I honour and regard him,
therefore I shall always look back
to him as a friend, though I should
never meet him again. Therefore
I would make any exertion, submit
to any sacrifice to save his life.
But, Grace, I do not love him.’ She
spoke faster and louder now. ‘ And,
moreover, if you believe he enter-
tains any such feelings on my be-
half, you are taneul am sure of
it—look at the case yourself, can-
didly and impartially. For nearly
two years I have never exchanged
words with him, either by speech
or writing—never seen him but
twice, and you yourself were pre-
sent each time. He may have ad-
mired meonce. I tell you honestly,
dear, I think he did, but he does
not care two straws for me now.’

Poor Mary! it was the hardest
gulp of all to keep back the tears
at this; not that she quite thought
it herself, but it was so cruel to be
obliged to say it. After all, she
was a woman, and though she tried
to have a heart of stone, it quivered
and bled lik@a heart of flesh all the
while, but she went on resolutely
with a tighter hold of the chair.

‘I think you and he are admi-
rably suited to each other. I think
a would be very happy together.

think, Grace, you like him very

VOL. LX. NO. CCCLX,

Young Ladies’ Sacrifices. 691

much—you-cannot deceive me, dear.
You have already excited his inte-
rest and admiration. Look in your
glass, my pretty Grace, and you
need not be surprised. Think what
will be his feelings when he owes
you hislife. It requires no prophet
to foretell how this must end. He
will love you, and you shall marry
him. Yes, Grace, you can surely
trust me. I swear to you from
henceforth, I will never so much
as speak to him again. You shall
not be made uneasy by me of all
people—only save fis life, Grace,
only use every effort, make every
sacrifice to save him, and I, Mary
Cave, that was never foiled or
beaten yet, promise you that he
shall be yours.’

It is peculiar to the idiosyncras
of women that they seem to think
they have a perfect right to dispose
of a heart that belongs to them, and
say to it, ‘you shall be enslaved
here, or enraptured there,at our good
pleasure.’ ould they be more
surprised or angry to find them-
selves taken at their word ?

Grace listened with a pleased ex-
ee of countenance. She be-

ieved every syllable her friend told
her. Itis very easy to believe what
we wish. And it was gratifying to
think that she had made an impres-
sion on the handsome young Cava-
lier, for whom she could not but own
she had once entertained a warm
feeling of attachment. Like many
another quiet and retiring woman,
this consciousness of conquest pos-
sessed for Grace a charm dangerous
and attractive in proportion to its
rarity. The timid are sometimes
more aggressive than the bold; and
Grace was sufficiently feminine to
receive considerable gratification
from that species of admiration
which Mary, who was surfeited with
it, thoroughly despised. It was the
old story between these two: the
one was courteously accepting as a
trifling gift, that which constituted
the whels worldly possessions of the
other. It is hard to offer up our
diamonds, and see them valued but
as paste.

‘There is no time to be lost,
Mary,’ observed Grace, after a few
moments’ reflection. ‘I will make
it my business to see General Effing-
ham before twenty-four hours have
Zz

692 Holmby House: a Tale of Old Northamptonshire. [December,

elasped. If, as you say, he enter-
tains this—this infatuation about
me, it will perhaps make him still
more anxious on behalf of his old
friend, to provide for whose safety
I should think he would strain every
nerve, even if there were no such
person as Grace Allonby in the
world. We will save Major Bos-
ville, Mary, whatever happens, if I
have to go down on my bended
knees to George Effingham. Not
that I think such a measure will be
needful,’ added Grace, with a smile ;
‘he is very courteous and conside-
rate, notwithstanding his stern brows
and haughty manner. Very chival-
rous, too, for a Puritan. My father
even avows he is a good soldier;
and I am sure he is a thorough
gentleman. Do you not think so,
Mary ?’

But Mary did not answer. She
had gained her point at last. Of
course it was a great comfort to
know that she had succeeded’in her
object. Had the purchase not been
worth the price, she would not surely
have offered it; and now the price
had been accepted, and the ransom
was actually paid, there was no-
thing more to be done. The ex-
citement was over, and the reaction
had already commenced.

* Bless you, Grace, for your kind-
ness,’ was all she said. ‘I am tired
now, and will goto bed. To-mor-
row we will settle everything.
Thank you, dear, again and again.’
With these words she pressed her
cold lips upon her friend’s hand;
and hiding her face as much as pos-
sible from observation, walked
quietly and sadly to her room.

It was an unspeakable relief to
be alone, face to face with her great
sorrow, but yet alone. To moan
aloud in her agony, and speak to
herself as though she were some one
else, and fling herself down on her
knees by the bed-side, burying her
head in those white arms, and weep
her heart out while she poured forth
the despairing prayer that she might
die, the only prayer of the afflicted
that falls short of the throne of
mercy. Once before in this very
room had Mary wrestled gallantly
with suffering, and been victorious.
Was she weaker now that she was
older? Shame! shame! that the
woman should give way to a trial

which the girl had found strength
enough to overcome. Alas! she
felt too keenly that she had then
lost an ideal, whereas this time she
had voluntarily surrendered a re-
ality. She had never known before
all she had dared, if not to hope, at
least to dream, of the future with
him that was still possible yester-
day—and now—

ost, too, by her own deed, of
her own free will. Oh! it was hard,
very hard to bear!

ut she slept, a heavy, sound,
and exhausted sleep. So it ever is
with great: and positive affliction.
Happiness will keep us broad awake
for hours, to rise with the lark ;
gladsome, notwithstanding our
vigils, as the bird itself, refreshed
and invigorated by the sunshine of
the soul. “Tis an unwilling bride
that is late astir on her wedding-
morn. Anxiety, with all its ha-
rassing effects, admits of but fever-
ish and fitful slumbers. The dreaded
crisis is never absent from our
thoughts ; and though the body may
be prostrated by weariness, the
mind refuses to & lulled to rest.
We donot envy the merchant prince
his bed of down, especially when he
has neglected to insure his argosies ;
but when the blow has actually
fallen, when happiness has spread
her wings and ieee away, as it
seems, for evermore, when there is
no room for anxiety, because the
worst has come at last, and hope
is but a mockery and a myth, then
doth a heavy sleep descend upon us,
like a pall upon a coffin, and mercy
bids us take our rest for a time,
senseless and forgetful like the dead.

But there was a bitter drop still
to be tasted in the full cup of Mary’s
sorrows. Even as she laid her down,
she dreaded the moment of waking
on the morrow; she wished—how
wearily !—thatshemight never wake
again, though she knew not then
that she would dream that night a
golden dream, such as should make
the morning’s misery almost too
heavy to endure.

She dreamed that he was once
again at Falmouth, as of old. She
walked by the seashore, and watched
the narrow line of calm blue water
and the ripple of the shallow wave
that stole gently to her feet along
the noiseless sand, The sea-bird’s

See eS eT erlUC OlUTC UVF

1859.]

wing shone white against the sum-
mer sky as he turned in his silent
flight; and the hushed breeze
searce lifted the folds of her own
white dress as she paced thought-
fully along. It was the dress he
liked so much; she had worn it be-
cause he was gone, far away beyond
those blue waters, with the Queen,
loyal and true as he had ever been.
Oh that he were here now, to walk
hand-in-hand with her along those
yellow sands! Even as she wished
he stood by her, his breath was on
her cheek, his eyes were looking
into hers, his arm stole round her
waist. She knew not how, nor why,
but she was his, his very own, and
for always, now. ‘At last,’ she
said, putting the hair back from his
forehead, and printing on the smooth
brow one long, clinging kiss, ‘ at
last! dear. You will never leave
me, now ?’ and the dream answered,
‘ Never, nevermore!’

Yet when she woke, she did not
waver in her resolution. Though
Mary Cave looked ten years older
than she had done but twenty-four
hours before, she said to her own
heart, ‘I have decided: it shall be
done!’

Cuaprer XXXV.
‘THE LANDING-NET.’

Faith had excited Dymocke’s
jealousy. This was a great point
gained; perhaps with the intuitive
knowledge of man’s weaknesses,
possessed by the shallowest and
most superficial of her sex, she had
perceived that some decisive mea-
sure was required to land her fish
at last. Though he had gorged the
bait greedily enough, though the
hook was fairly fixed in a vital spot,
and nothing remained—to continue
our metaphor—but to brandish the
landing-net, and subsequent frying-
pan, the prize — stolidly in
deep waters. This state of apathy
in the finny tribe is termed ‘ sulk-
ing’ by the disciples of Izaak
Walton ; and the great authorities
who have succeeded that colloquial
philosopher, in treating of the gentle
art, recommend that stones should
be thrown, and other offensive mea-
sures practised, in order to bring the
fish once more to the surface.

Let us see to what description of

Women’s Wit. 693

stone-throwing Faith resorted to
secure the prey, for which, to do
her justice, she had long been
angling with much craft, skill, and
untiring patience.

Dymocke, we need hardly now
observe, was an individual who en-
tertained no mean and derogatory
opinion of his own merits or his
own charms. An essential article of
his belief had always been that there
was at least one bachelor left, who
was an extraordinarily eligible in-
vestment for any of the weaker sex
below the rank of a lady ; and that
bachelor bore the name ‘ Hugh Dy-
mocke.’ With such a creed, it was
no easy matter to bring to book our
far-sighted philosopher. His good
opinion of himself made it useless
to practise on him the usual arts of
coldness, contempt, and what is
vulgarly termed ‘snubbing.” Even
jealousy, that last and usually effi-
cacious remedy, was not easily
aroused in so self-satisfied a mind;
and as for hysterics, scenes, re-
proaches, and appeals to tlie pas-
sions, all such recoiled from his ex-

erienced nature, like hailstones
rom an armour of proof. He was
a difficult subject, this wary old
trooper. Crafty, callous, opinionated,
above all, steeped in practical as
well as theoretical wisdom. Yet,
when it came to a trial of wits, the
veriest chit of a silly waiting-maid
could turn him round her finger at
will.

We have heard it asserted by
sundry idolaters, that even ‘the
worst woman is better than the best
man.’ On the truth of this axiom
we would not venture to pronounce.
Flattering as is our opinion of the
gentle sex, we should be sorry to
calculate the amount of evil which
it would require to constitute the
worst of those fascinating natures
which are so prone to run into ex-
tremes; but of this we are sure,
that the silliest woman in all mat-
ters of finesse and subtlety is a
match, and more than a match, for
the wisest of mankind. Here was
Faith, for instance, who, with the
exception of her journey to Oxford,
had never been a dozen miles from
her own home, outwitting and out-
manoeuvring a veteran toughened by
ever so many campaigns, and sharp-
ened by five-and-twenty years’ prac-
ZZ2

694 Holmby House: a Tale of Old Northamptonshire. (December,

tice in all the stratagems of love
and war.

After revolving in her own mind
the different methods by which it
would be advisable to hasten a
catastrophe that should terminate
in her own espousals to her victim,
the little woman resolved on jea-
lousy as the most prompt, the most
efficacious, and perhaps the most
merciful in the end. Now, a man
always goes to work in the most
blundering manner possible when
he so far forgets his own honest
dog-like nature as to play such
tricks as these. He invariably
selects some one who is diametri-
cally the opposite of the real object
of attack, and proceeds to open the
war with such haste and energy as
are perfectly unnatural in on.
selves, and utterly transparent to
the laughing bystanders. When he
thinks he is getting on most swim-
mingly, the world sneers; the fic-
titious object, who has, indeed, no
cause to be flattered, despises ; and
the real one, firmer in the saddle
than ever, laughs athim. Itserves
himright, for dabbling with a science
of which he does not know the
simplest rudiments. This was not
Faith’s method. We think we have
already mentioned that in attend-
ance upon the King at Holmby was
a certain yeoman of the guard on
whom that damsel had deigned to
shed the sunshine of her smiles, in
which the honest functionary basked
with a stolid satisfaction edifying to
witness. He was a steady, sedate,
and goodly personage ; and, save for
his bulk, the result of little thought
combined with much feeding, and
his comeliness, which he inherited
from a Yorkshire mother, was the
very counterpart of Dymocke him-
self. He was nearly of the same age,
had served in the wars on the King’s
side with some little distinction,
was equally a man of few words,
Wise saws, and an outward demea-
nourof profoundsagacity,but lacked,
it must be confessed, that prompt
wit and energy of action which
made amends for much of the ab-
surdity of our friend Hugh’s pre-
tensions.

He was, in short, such a person-
age as it seemed natural for a woman
to admire who had been capable of
appreciating the good qualities of

the sergeant; apd in this Faith
showed a tact and discernment es-
sentially feminine. Neither did she
go to work ‘ hammer-and-tongs,’ as
if there were not a moment to be
lost; on the contrary, she rather
suffered than encouraged the yeo-
man’s unwieldy attentions; and
taxed her energies, not so much to
captivate him, as to watch the effect
of her behaviour on the real object
of attack. She had but little time,
it is true, for her operations, which
were limited to the period of the
King’s short visit at Boughton ; but
she had no reason to be dissatisfied
with the success of her efforts, even
long before the departure of his
Majesty and the unconscious rival.

'ymocke, elated with his last
exploit, and full of the secret intelli-
gence he had to communicate, at
first took little notice of his sweet-
heart, or indeed of any of the
domestics; and Faith, wisely letting
him alone, played on her own game
with persevering steadiness. After
a time, she succeeded in arousing
his attention, then his anxiety, and
lastly his wrath. At first he seemed
simply surprised, then contemp-
tuous, afterwards anxious, and lastly
undoubtedly and unreasonably
angry, with himself, with her, wit
her. new acquaintance, with the
whole world; and she looked so
confoundedly pretty all the time!
When the yeoman went away,
Faith gazed after the departing
cavalcade from the buttery-window
with adeep sigh. She remarked to
one of the other maids ‘that she
felt as if she could die for the
King; and what a becoming uni-
form was worn by the yeomen of
the guard.’ Dymocke, who had ap-
proached her with some idea of an
armistice, if not a treaty of peace,
turned away with a smothered curse
and a bitter scowl. All that night
he never came near her, all the next
morning he never spoke to her, yet
she met him somehow at every turn.
He was malleable now, and it was
time to forge him into a tool.

It was but yesterday we watched
two of our grandchildren at play in
the corridor. The little girl, with
a spirit of unjust acquisitiveness,
laid violent hands upon her brother's
toys, taking from him successively
the whole of his marbles, a dis-

1859.]

cordant tin trumpet, and a stale
morsel of plum-cake. The boy, a
sturdy, curly-headed, open-eyed
urchin, rising five, resented this
wholesale spoliation with consider-
able energy, and a grand quarrel,
not without violence, was the result.
The usual declaration of hostility,
‘then I wont play,’ was followed by
a retreat to different corners of the
gallery; and a fit of ‘the sulks,’
lasting nearly twenty minutes, af-
forded a short interval of peace and
quiet to the household.

A child’s resentment, however, is
not of long duration; and we are
bound to admit that in this instance
the aggressor made the first ad-
vances to a reconciliation, ‘You
began it, dear,’ lisped the little
vixen, a thorough woman already,
though she can hardly speak plain.
‘Kiss and make up, brother: you
began it!’ And we are persuaded
that the honest little fellow, with
his masculine softness of head and
heart, believed himself to have been
from the commencement wholly and
solely in the wrong.

So Faith, lying in wait for Dy-
mocke at a certain angle of the
back-yard, where there was not
much likelihood of interruption,
stood to her arms boldly, and com-
menced the attack.

‘Are you never going to speak to
me again, sergeant?’ said Faith,
with a half-mournful, half-resentful
expression on-her pretty face. ‘I
know what new acquaintances are—
the miller’s daughter’s a good girl,
and a comely; but it’s not so far
from here to Brampton Mill that
you need to be in such a hurry as
not to spare a word to an old friend,
Hugh!’

The last monosyllable was only
whispered, but accompanied by a
soft stolen glance from under a pair
of long eyelashes, it did not’ fail to
produce a certain effect.

‘The miller’s daughter! Bramp-
ton Mill!’ exclaimed Hugh, aghast
andopen-mouthed,dumb-foundered,
as well he might be, at an accusa-
tion so devoid of the slightest
shadow of justice.

‘Oh! I know what I know,’ pro-
ceeded Faith with increased agita-
tion and alarming volubility. ‘I
know where you were spending the
day yesterday, and the day before,

How Faith tormented Dymocke.

695

and the day before that! I know
why you leave your work in the
morning, and the dinner stands till
it’s cold, and the horse is kept out
all day, and comes home in a muck
of sweat; and it’s “‘where’s the
sergeant ?” and has “anybody seen
Hugh?” and “ Mistress Faith, can
you tell what’s become of Dy-
mocke ?” all over the house. But
I answer them, “I’ve nothing to do
with Dymocke; Dymocke don’t
belong to me. Doubtless he’s gone
to see his friends in the neighbour-
hood; and he knows his own ways
best.” Oh! J don’t want to pry
upon you, sergeant; it’s nothing
to me when you come and go; an

no doubt, as I said before, she’s a
good girl, and a comely; and gota
bit of money too; for her sister
that married Will Jenkins she’s
gone and quarrelled with her father ;
and the brother, you know, he’s in
hiding ; and they’re a bad lot alto-
gether, all but ter; and I hope
you'll be happy, Sergeant Dymocke;
and you've my best wishes; and
(sob) prayers (sob), for all that’s
come and gone yet (sob), Hugh J”

To say that Dymocke was asto-
nished, stupified, at his wit’s end, is
but a weak mode of expressing his
utter discomfiture ; the old soldier
was completely routed, front, flanks,
and rear, disarmed and taken pri-
soner, he was utterly at the mercy
of his conqueror.

‘It’s not much to ask,’ pursued
Faith, her cheeks flushing, and her
bosom heaving as she wept out her
plaint; ‘it’s not much to ask, and
I should like to have back the
broken sixpence, and the silver
buckles, and the—the—the bit of
sweet marjoram I gave you yester-
day was a fortnight, if it’s only
for a keepsake and a remembrance
when you're married, Hugh, and
you and me are separated for ever!’

With these desponding words,
the disconsolate damsel buried her
face in her apron and moaned
aloud.

What a brute he felt himself!
how completely she had put him
in the wrong—how his conscience
smote him, innocent as he was con-
cerning the miller’s daughter, for
many little instances of inattention
and neglect towards his aflianced
bride, who was now so unselfishly

696 Holmby House: a Tale of Old Northamptonshire. [December,

giving him up, with such evident
distress. How his heart yearned
towards her now, weeping there in
her rustic beauty, and he pitied her,
pitied her, whilst all the time, with
his boasted sagacity and experience,
he was as helpless as a baby in the
little witch’s hands.

‘Don’t ye take on so, Faith,’ he
said, attempting an awkward caress,
from which she snatched herself
indignantly away, ‘don’t ye take
on 80. never went xear the
miller’s daughter, Faith—I tell ye
I didn’t, as I’m a living man!’

‘Oh! it’s nothing to me, ser-
geant, whether you did or whether

ou didn’t,’ returned the lady,
ooking up for an instant, and in-
continently hiding her face in her
=— for a fresh burst of grief.
* It’s all over between you and me
now, Hugh, for evermore!’

‘ Never say such a word, my dear,’
returned Dymocke, waxing consi-
derably alarmed, as the possibility
of her being in earnest occurred to
him, and the horrid suspicion
dawned on his mind that this might
be a ruse to get rid of him in favour
of the comely yeoman, after all ;
‘and if you come to that, lass, you
weren't so true to your colours
yourself yesterday, that you need
to turn the tables this way upon

me.’

She had led him to the point now.
Then he was jealous, as she intended
he should be, and she had got him
safe.

‘I’m sure I don’t know. what you
mean, Sergeant Dymocke,’ answered

7

Mistress Faith, demurely, sobbing
at longer intervals, and drying her
eyes while she spoke. ‘If you al-
lude to my conversation with one of
his blessed Majesty’s servants yes-
terday, I answer you that it was in
me wppe of yourself and all my
ord’s servants; and if it hadn’t
been, I’m accountable to no one.
A poor lone woman like me can’t
be too careful, I know; a poor lone
woman that’s got nobody to defend
her character, speak up for her, or
take care of her, and that’s lost her
best friend, that quarrels with her
whether she willor no. Oh! what
shall I do P—what shall I do?’
The action was very nearly over
now. Another flood of tears,
brought up like a skilful general’s

reserve, in the nick of time, turned
the tide of affairs, and nothing was
left for the sergeant but to surrender
at discretion.

‘It’s your own fault if it be so,’
whispered Hugh, with that pecu-
liarly sheepish expression which
pervades the male Tbiped’s counte-
nance when he so far humiliates
himself as to make a bond fide pro-

osal. ‘If you'll say the word,

aith, say it now, for indeed I love
you, and I'll never be easy till
you're my wife, and that’s the
truth !’

But Faith wouldn’t say the word
at once, nor indeed could she be
brought to put a period to her ad-
mirer’s sufferings, in which, like a
very woman, she found a morbid
and inexplicable gratification, until
she had well-nigh worried him into
a withdrawal of his offer, when she
said it in a great hurry, and sealed
her submission with a kiss.

On the subsequent festivities held
both in the parlour and the hall—for
Sir Giles drank the bride’s health
in a bumper, and the ladies of the
family thought nothing too good to
present to their favourite on the
happy occasion of her marriage—it
is not our province to enlarge. In
compliance with the maxim that
‘ happy’s the wooing that’s not long
in doing,’ the nuptials took place as
soon as the necessary preparations
could be made, and a prettier or a
happier-looking bride than Faith
never knelt bees the altar.

The sergeant, however, betrayed
a scared and somewhat startled ap-
pearance, as that of one who is not
completely convinced of his own
identity, bearing his part neverthe-
less as a bridegroom bravely and
jauntily enough.

At his own private opinion of the
catastrophe we can but guess by a
remark which he was overheard to
address to himself immediately after
his acceptance by the pretty wait-
ing-maid, and her consequent de-
parture to acquaint her mistress.

‘You've done it now, old lad,’
observed the sergeant, shaking his
head, and speaking in a deliberate,
reflective, and somewhat sarcastic
tone. ‘ What is to be must be, I
suppose, and all things turn out for
the best. But there’s no question
about it—you'’ve—done—it—now !’

1859.]

697

ENGLAND'S LITERARY DEBT TO ITALY.

Ta are few passages, even in
the works of John Milton, of
more direct and touching interest
than that in the Second Defence of
the People of England; where, re-
plying to the aspersions of Sal-
masius, he gives to the world the
unvarnished narrative of his early
life in Italy. We there see how
well and wisely, how prudently and
purely, he pursued the even tenor
of his way in a country and amongst
a people widely different from his
own; how the English commoner
became the friend of Italian nobles ;
how the youthful Puritan was the
favourite of Romish prelates. It
was his fortune, before starting for
Italy, to receive the counsels of Sir
Henry Wotton, the English diplo-
matist, beyond all others in that
age well acquainted with Italian
politics and life; as it was his still
greater fortune in after years to pen
the instructions in which another
English diplomatist, Samuel Mor-
land, bore the high resolve of Oliver
to the Duke of Savoy, that the
eruelties practised on his Walden-
sian subjects must cease at once.
And his correspondence with his
Italian friends shows that to the
end of his life he bore an affectionate
remembrance of Manso and Diodati,
and Frescobaldi and Buonomattei,
in whose society he had taken such
delight during his stay in Naples
and in Florence. He never alludes,
save in terms of the warmest grati-
tude, to these early friends, and to
the social intercourse and literary
tastes which their names recal.

A debt of gratitude akin to that
felt and proclaimed by Milton, is
due by every English scholar and
student, by every lover of English
poetry, to the literature of Italy.

Ve are about to trespass on the in-
dulgence of our readers by passing
in review some of the claims. They
have of late been too much over-
looked. Perhaps no greater change
was ever witnessed in the current of
general education among our coun-
trymen, and still more of our coun-
trywomen, than that by which their
studies have been diverted from
Italian to German letters. ~ All
elderly persons are well able to re-
collect when an acquaintance with

the Italian language formed an
essential part of the education of
every young lady just entering on
life; when a knowledge of Tasso
and Alfieri, of Metastasio and Gol-
doni, was regarded as the crowning
grace of her intellectual accom-
plishments; and when the power
of reading and understanding the
Egmont of Goethe, or the Wilhelm
Tell of Schiller, was hardly less rare
than an acquaintance in the original
Sanscrit with the Sakantalu of
Kalidasa. This state of matters, we
take it, is now strikingly reversed.
The sunny slopes of the Italian
Parnassus are almost deserted for
the witch-haunted cliffs and caverns
of the Brocken: for one student
who has perused the Filippo of
Alfieri, there are fifty who have read
the Don Carlos of Schiller; for one
traveller who has journeyed with
Dante from the regions of endless
woe to the realms of celestial light,
a hundred at least have shuddered
when Mephistopheles yells forth
his infernal Her zu mir.

Nor are the causes of this change
in the literary tastes of English
society extremely difficult of com-
prehension. A utilitarian age looks
first to immediate utility in its in-
tellectual efforts and requirements.
Quite apart from the sympathies of
race; from those not less powerful,
of religion, other reasons have led
to the preference at present given
to German over Italian studies.
The Italian Muses, whether of epie
or lyric poetry, of the drama, or of
history, seem smitten with hopeless
barrenness. The actual present
pressing interests of life are not
mirrored forth in their creations.
The political speculations of the
most popular . and poli-
tician whom Italy can boast of in
the present century—the ideal pic-
tures of national and reformin
Popes which Vincenzo Gioberti held
up to his countrymen—are no ex-
ceptions to this censure. They
would have been simply a most
laughable hoax had they not, alas!
been something infinitely worse—a
mockery, a delusion, and a snare to
millions of Italians. The poems of
Prati on contemporary events are
not wanting in a certain melodra-

698

matic effect, which too frequently,
it must be owned, passes into bom-
bast; and though no such fault dis-
figures those of Giusti, the allusions
in which the verse of the latter
abounds are so local, so exclusively
Tuscan—even Florentine in their
character—that a reader must have
lived for years under the shadow of
Brunelleschi’s cupola before he can
thoroughly understand their politi-
cal bearing or relish their sparkling
wit. Manzoni had no sooner given
to the world the only historical
romance to be mentioned in the
same breath with Scott’s, than he
followed it up by a ponderous dis-
sertation in which the essence of
historical romance was rudely as-
sailed, and all writings of that class
held up to critical contempt as the
offspring of a corrupted taste and
the symptoms of a degenerate age.
In history one name, and only one,
now represents the land of Machi-
avelli and Guicciardini, of Sarpi and
Giannone. That name, however, is
Michell Amari, whose narratives of
the Sicilian vespers and of the
Moslem domination in Sicily may
rank worthily by the side of the
historical masterpieces of either his
own or former times. There are
indeed writers on social philosophy
and educational science, but they
exercise comparatively little influ-
ence in their own country, and are
almost wholly unknown beyond the
Alps. What English student of
politica! philosophy ever turns to
the pages of Romagnosi, what jurist
to those of Francesco Forti? What
zealous preceptor seeks a guidance
on his intricate path from the edu-
cational treatises of Lambruschini
or Tommaseo? Some of these voices
are even now uttering words of
wisdom at Turin and Florence, but
for any echo ever found in England
they might as well be addressing an
aien of Celestials in the college
of Pekin. It was not always so.
There was a time—it was the time
of Spenser and Raleigh, of Shak-
speare and Bacon—when Italian
influences were reflected in the
scholar’s lore, and the courtier’s
speech, and the poet’s song; when
love-sick swains were wont to han

over the sonnets of Petrarch, an

subtle politicians to seek inspiration
from the pages of Machiavelli.

England’s Literary Debt to Italy.

[December,

We would fain recal the memory of
that time, for it is inseparably asso-
ciated with the grandeur and glory
of English literature; nay, even
with the political and social progress
of our people: the tone of thought
and feeling that then prevailed har-
monizing so strongly with our
national character, that though the
literary tastes of later times may
have acquired a transitory and
fleeting influence, that tone will
after all be the one in which the true
masters of English poetry will best
love to speak, and which all culti-
vated Englishmen will most delight
to hear.

The influence of Italian literature
on that of Germany and France has
been treated within the last few
years by two writers, both emi-
nently qualified for that inquiry.
Baron Alfred de Reumont, Chargé
d’Affaires of Prussia at the late court
of Tuscany, has published a carefully
written dissertation on the relation
between Italian and German letters.
M. Rathery, the very learned
librarian of the Louvre, has given
to the world an essay which gained
the prize of the French Academy,
On the Influence of Italian on
French Literature. Both works are
stamped with the habits and pur-
suits of their respective authors.
M. de Reumont examines in detail
the influence of Italian tastes, as
received and reflected by the petty
courts and courtiers of his own
country. The librarian of the
Louvre passes inreview every branch
of letters, seldom spares his reader
the title of a volume, even when re-
fraining from all criticism on its
contents, and clearly regards it as
the chief glory of Boccaccio that he
furnished materials for the humour
of Lafontaine.

In a far more philosophical and
comprehensive spirit, Arthur Hallam
has passed in review the successive
phases of the influence which Italian
works of imagination have exercised
on the development of our own
poetical literature. In the follow-
ing equally beautiful and discrimi-
nating passage of his Cambridge
Oration, the benefits we owe to Italy
are so fully and so eloquently set
forth that it may be taken as a text
which the literary historian need
only expand and comment on :—

1859.]

We need only cast a hasty glance over
the pages of Chaucer to see how readily
he drank at the sources of old Roman
and Provengal poetry. But we shall
perceive also a vein of stronger thought
arfd chaster expression than were common
in Cisalpine countries, we shall recognise
the subduing, yet at the same time ele-
vating power, which passed into his soul
from their spirits, who just before the
season of his greatness had ‘enlumined
Italy of poetrie.’ We know that he
travelled to that land.
recorde his admiration of Francis Pe-
trarke, the laureate-poet, and of that
otherwise poet of Florence, bright
Dante. From Boccacio he imitated as
masters alone imitate, that incomparable
composition The Knight's Tale, also the
beautiful story of Griseldis, and pro-
bably the Troilus and Cresseide. In the
latter he has inserted a sonnet of
Petrarch ; but it is not so much to his
direct adoptions that I refer as to the
general modulation of thought, that
clear softness of his images, that ener-
getic self-possession of his conceptions,
and that melodious repose in which are
held together all the emotions he deli-
neates. The distinct influence of the
Italian character is more evident with
respect to the father of our poetry than
afterwards with respect to Spenser and
his contemporaries, precisely because it
was in the first period more pure in
itself, and had admitted little of the
Northern Romance. Thesecond develop-
ment of the Italian poetry was, as we
have seen, formed out of the old chi-
valrous stories, and may be considered
as formed on the Norman French, just
as the first had been on the Provengal.
It came, therefore, bearing its own
recommendation to our Norman land;
exactly the same part of our national
temper now caught with eagerness at
Ariosto and Tasso, which in less civilized
times had delighted in the Brat d’ Angle-
terre, and the Roman de la Rose. No
sooner had the mighty spirit of the
Protestant reformation awakened all
dormant energies and justified all lofty
aspirations, than literature of all sorts,
but especially poetry, began to arise in
England, and one of its first results, or
steps of progress, was to bring us into
close communication with this second
school of transalpine poets. Ascham,
in his Scholemaster, informs us that
about this time an infinite number of
Italian books were translated into
English. It should seem too that our
metrical language acquired many im-
provements from this study. Warton
assures us that the poets in the age of
Elizabeth introduced a great variety of
measures from the Italian ; particularly
in the lyrical pieces of that time, in their

Mr. A. Hallam on the Influence of Italian Literature.

We have on—

699

canzonets, madrigals, devises, and epi-
thalamiums. It is needless to multiply
instances of so palpable a fact as is the
Italian tone of sentiment in those great
writers to whom we owe almost every-
thing. What soothed the solitary hours
of Surrey with a more powerful magic
than Agrippa could have shown him ?
What comforted the noble Sidney when
he sought refuge in flight from the dan-
gerous kindness of his too beautiful
Stella? What potent charm could lure

-that genius, whose ambitious grasp an

Eldorado had hardly sufficed, to utter
his melodious plaint over the grave
where Laura lay? From what source
of perpetual freshness did Fletcher
nourish his tenderness of soul, his rich
pictorial powers, his deep and varied
melodies ? And what shall not be said
of him, that ‘sage serious Spenser,’ of
whom Milton speaks, and whom: ‘he
dares be known to think a better teacher
than Scotus or Aquinas? It is worthy
of remark that Spenser, attached as he
was to the wilder strains of the chival-
rous epic, has not, like most of his time,
neglected the higher mood of the early
Florentines. The hymns to heavenly
love and beauty, and many parts of the
Fairy Queen, especially the sixth canto
of the third book, attest how thoroughly
he felt the spirit of Petrarch, whom the
generality of these writers seem to have
known only through the Petrarchisti, so
little do they comprehend what they
profess to copy. It would have been
strange, however, if, in the most uni-
versal mind that ever existed, there had
been no express recognition of that
mode of sentiment, which had first
asserted the character and designated
the direction of modern literature. I
cannot help considering the sonnets of
Shakspeare as a sort of homage to the
Genius of Christian Europe, necessarily
exacted, although voluntarily paid,
before he was allowed to take in hand
the sceptre of his endless dominion.

The allusion, in the concluding
sentence of this eloquent extract, to
the Italian tastes of Shakspeare,
may justify a reference to the ad-
mirable tact and sound discretion
with which he selected his plots
from Northern tradition or Southern
romance. Whenever, indeed, his
sternest work: is to be done, he turns
to his native north. In Lear, in
Macbeth, in Hamlet, in the spectacle
of a whole world falling in ruins, of
heroic energies in subjection to the

wers of darkness, of a great task
imposed by a voice from the tomb,
a task that may not be renounced,
but is still delayed, in these terrible

England’s Literary Debt to Italy.

dramas the poet reverts to the early
history of his own or kindred
nations, for in these plays civil life
stands more prominently forth, and
Shakspeare required for his plot the
broader foundations on which the
Gothic peoples reared their empires.
In the last two the sanctities of
religion are clearly intimated ; spiri-
tual equally with natural influences
are at work; we are reminded at
every moment of the belief, fervent
though rude, with which the Ger-
manic tribes embraced the Christian
faith. Above all, in Hamlet, from
the shock which the hero receives
at the discovery of a mother’s guilt,
we are made aware of the almost
religious veneration with which,
from the days of Tacitus, the Gothic
tribes regarded female purity, and
honoured female character, and
which to this hour still influences
the opinions, and feelings, and
manners of northern as opposed to
southern Europe.

But in other, in lighter, at least in
more chequered moods, Shakspeare
hies unto Italy. He loves to disport

in the garden of the earth. He
eee or
c

creates Italian
aracters. When he would repre-
sent a noble and ouemgiiined
prince, wielding by his knowledge
a power over nature, and solacing
himself with volumes that he prizes
above his dukedom, although the
scene be the still vexed Bermoothes,
he there exhibits to us the lord of
absolute Milan, the city of the ac-
complished and magnificent Vis-
conti. When he would charm us
with a gay wit and dazzling rhetoric,
he transports us to Messina; and
the fencing of Benedict and Bea-
trice, the sports of a courtly
leisure, are but the natural fruits
of a degree of social elegance which
had been attained in Italy alone.
When describing the gorgeous
splendour and the sudden vicissi-
tudes of fortune of a great com-
mercial community, and exhibiting
the high mercantile integrity on
which its prosperity is based, as
well as the sordid and selfish spirit
by which its lustre is so often tar-
nished—in holding up this picture
to his countrymen the poet instinc-
tively turns to the Queen of the
Adriatic, and under the shadow of
St. Mark’s, or on the steps of the

[ December,

Rialto, finds a fitting stage for the
enmity of Antonio and Shylock.
And to show how well he knew that
land, he has pictured the indignities
which it has aye been doomed -to
suffer; he has shown Italy ‘ with
her harvests trodden down by the
horses of the stranger, and the blood
of her children wasted in quarrels
not their own ;’ he has depicted the
Italy over which the hosts of
Charles VIII. and Louis XII.
rolled like the sea-waves ; he pitches
a French camp in Tuscany ; he puts
very big words into the mouths of
terrible French colonels ; he makes
the braggart Parolles vaunt of
achievements which he will never
execute before the Roman gate of
Florence.

It is difficult, however, in the
case of Shakspeare, to separate the
influences which assisted to mould
his intellect from the glorious mani-
festations of that intellect itself; to
say with any degree of certainty, if
such and such models had not been
offered to his imitation, we should
never have laughed at the wit of
Falstaff or shuddered at the wrongs
of Lear. The Secretary of the
Belfast Natural History Society,
Mr. Patterson, published some years
ago an able work on the ento-
mology of Shakspeare, in which he
established that the poet’s acquain-
tance with the insect world was as
accurate as it was extensive. But we
should be jumping too hastily toa
conclusion, were we to infer from
that fact that entomological science
was generally cultivated in the
Elizabethan age. Itis no otherwise
with Shakspeare’s Italian tastes.
That they are so strongly reflected
in his writings would not of itself
prove that they were commonly
diffused, any more than the fact
that Hamlet abounds with illustra-
tions and speculations on infirmity
of will determines the character of
the ethical inquiries most popular in
the generation which first beheld
it

The true character of an age is
not always most faithfully reflected
in the works of its greatest and
highest poets, nor, let us hasten to
add, in those of its least and lowest.
The extraordinary paradox once
thrown out by Southey, that the
progress of English poetry would be

ee S ee ON seLCUCYC~C<CS P:i<‘<i‘

Oo OF

best illustrated by a succession of
extracts from our worst poets, had
nothing save the novelty of paradox
to recommend it. Stupidity can
boast of its unfathomable depths as
truly as genius of its unapproachable
heights, and it is difficult to under-
stand by what title the author of a
Fay ome tragedy may rave away
the character of his age and nation.
Our literature, which now owes so
much to the influence of German
oetry, would hardly accept as its
egitimate representatives those who
once imported a maudlin sentimen-
talism—
from the U-
niversity of Gottingen.

If, as common sense would at
once suggest, the literary taste and
social refinement of an age are best
represented by neither its highest
nor its lowest writers, but by the
popular poet whom his contempo-
raries prized and loved, but whose

1859. ] Samuel Daniell. 701

strains fall unheeded on the ear of
a later generation, we would at once
select Samuel Daniell, the successor
of Spenser in the poet-laureateship,
and one of the most popular poets of
his day, as an example of the mode
in which the influences of an Italian
style might be combined with a
thoroughly English tone of thought,
and a singular, by no means suffi-
ciently-estimated purity, of English
idiom.

Samuel Daniell represents the
Italian influence as accepted, mo-
dified, and outstripped by the inde-
pendence of English thought. Ina

oem addressed to the Countess of
emabroke, he expresses the belief
that Italian will be soon eclipsed by
English genius; that the greatest
masterpieces of Italian poetry will
be far surpassed by the creations of
his own countrymen. Our insular
osition, he complains, acts as a
arrier to our fame :—

O that the ocean did not bound our style

Within these strict and narrow limits so,

But that the melody of our sweet isle

Might now be heard to Tyber, Arno, Po,

That they might know how far Thames doth outgo
The music of declined Italy ;

And listening to our songs another while,

Might learn of thee their notes to purify.
O why may not some after-coming hand
Unlock these limits, open our confines,
And break asunder the impris’ning band,

T’ inlarge our spirits and publish our designs,

Planting our roses on the Apennines ?

Far prouder anticipations, far
loftier prophecies than these—anti-
cipations and prophecies most
gloriously fulfilled, inspire the con-
cluding lines of his Musophilus. A
truly filial love and reverence did
Samuel Daniell cherish for his
mother-tongue. His patriotic hopes
wing their course beyond the Tyber

and the Arno, and there is fore-
shadowed in his verse the time when
millions on the continent and isles of
the Far West shall speak the speech
of Shakspeare and of Bacon. He
beholds in the scheme of Providence
a great part assigned unto the
English tongue. ‘Why,’ he ex-
claims :—

Why should we careless come behind the rest

In power of words that go before in worth,

When, as our accent’s equal to the best,

Is able greater wonders to bring forth ?

And, who in time knows, whither we may vent

The treasure of our tongue, to what strange shores
This gain of our best glory shall be sent

Tenrich unknowing nations with our stores ?

What worlds in the yet unformed Occident

May come refined with the accents that are ours?

Or who can tell, for what great work in hand,

The greatness of our style is now ordained,

What powers it shall bring in, what spirits command,
What thoughts let out, what humours keep restrained ;
What mischiefs it may powerfully withstand,

And what fair ends may thereby be attained.

702

Lord Bacon, some wiseacres have
recently maintained, is the real
author of the plays ascribed to
William Shakspeare. It would
have been easier to make out a case
for his authorship of Daniell’s
poems. The speculations on the
effects of the invention of printing
and gunpowder in the Civil Wars,
the strictures on the defects of uni-
versity education, and the very
passages we have just quoted from
the poem of Musophilus, breathe
more of Bacon’s spirit than can be
traced in any contemporary verse.
And a taste so correct, that it almost
appears an instinct, led Daniell to
embody his thoughts in those wards,
and those alone, which have survived
every caprice of fashion and vicissi-
tude of style. The accomplished
scholars who now aim at producing
a more comprehensive and accurate
dictionary of our language have na-
turally and necessarily directed their
attention to the words hitherto un-
noticed, or but imperfectly defined
in our elder classics. Had the ob-
ject of their inquiries been reversed,

ad they sought to determine the
works -in which archaisms least
abound, they could have found no
study more interesting and instruc-
tive than the poems of Samuel
Daniell.

Daniell may be said to mark the
turning-point in the influence of
Italian upon English letters, the
point when our writers, copying
the affectations of Marini, began to
lose sight of their greater models,
Dante and Petrarch. His connexion
with Italy was not merely literary,
for his sister was married to John
Florio, the original of Shakspeare’s
* Holofernes,’ and the translator of
Montaigne. Florio, after having
been tutor to the son of Barnes,
Bishop of Durham, and acting as
his preceptor in the French and
Italian languages when he was sent
to Magdalen College, Oxford, was
admitted a member of that college,
and became a regular teacher of
languages in the University. He
subsequently was appointed tutor to
Prince Henry, and at length made
one of the Privy Chamber and Clerk
of the Closet to Queen Anne. ‘He
was a very useful man in his pro-
fession,’ says Chalmers, ‘ zealous for
the Protestant religion, and much

England's Literary Debt to Italy.

[ December,

devoted to the English nation.’ Not
so very zealous, not so thoroughly
devoted, if credence must be given
to certain despatches of the Tuscan
envoy, published a few months ago
in the Archivio Storicoof Vieussieux,
in which Florio is represented as
pandering to, Popish tendencies and
tastes at the English Court. There
can be no doubt of the great services
he rendered in promoting and fa-
cilitating the study of Italian
literature.

Even before the formation of the
modern languages the influence of
the Italian mind was necessaril

owerful, because. the great intel.
ectual and moral influence was that
of Rome. From every corner of
Europe priests streamed to Rome,
and one sent out her legates to
every part of Europe. But we are
not now engaged in examining the
authority of the priest-schoolmen,
the priest-lawyers, the priest-states-
men of Italy. Shaks eare has
given us in his Pandulph the type
of the whole class. With what
Machiavellian coolness he deals with
all existing relations; how the loves
and hates, and hopes and fears, and
prejudices and passions of rival
princes and hostile states are
weighed in the balance of his policy!
If ‘ the apology of Bishop Blougram’
be accepted as the true rationale of
a cardinal’s works and ways in our
own age (and Robert Browning
clearly means it to be so), the mem-
bers of the Sacred College are quite
as subtle and just as unscrupulous
in the days of Wiseman as they
ever showed themselves in those of
Pandulph.

Onemust remember what Florence
and the Florentines were for the
rest of Europe in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, to understand
how the influence of their literature
was often directly opposed to such
clerical intrigues, how it powerfully
assisted to form the lay element in
modern society. The Florentines
were all that the English now are:
they were the great capitalists of
their time; the Bardi and Peruzzi
were the Barings and Rothschilds
of the middle ages, and found some-
times to their cost that an English
loan in the fourteenth was as un-
profitable as a Spanish one in the
nineteenth century. And toa com-

————e EO l(

a Fe = DIY CU SO OTE OS ae

— + wee rrr

1859.]

mercial influence like that now pos-
sessed by modern London was
joined a literary and social influence
like that now exercised by modern
Paris, and as if all this were not
enough, there was added a supre-
macy in art to which no parallel
can be found save in the annals of
ancient Athens. To what causes
must we ascribe this marvellous
variety and versatility of genius?
Whence came it that the most
practical was beyond all comparison
the most ideal people of modern
Europe ?

The explanation is not difficult.
Gray, in one of his letters to
Warton, was about the first writer
who pointed out the resemblance
between the republics of ancient
Greece and those of medieval Italy.
How is the ascendancy of she
ancient Athenians to be accounted
for P

The true solution of that phenomenon
(it has been finely said by Lord
Brougham) is to be found in the sin-
gular state and condition of Greece,
and of Athens more particularly. A
republic of independent nations, differ-
ing from each other in their particular
habits and institutions, but united for
purposes of general safety, burning
with the most anxious and jealous desire
of surpassing each other, brought into
frequent contact and collision upon set
and solemn occasions of religion, of
games, of spectacles, nursed and pam-
~~ into the most unbounded nationality

y the consciousness of great achieve-
ments, a nationality kept alive by
poetry, by oratory, by monuments and
inscriptions ; impressed with an un-
shaken belief (not very far removed
from the truth) that whatever was great,
and good, and virtuous, and splendid,
centred in and was confined to their
own territory ; such a people were con-
tinually goaded and stimulated to ex-
ertion by the most intense rivalry and
impatient thirst for glory. The very
narrowness of their limits, to which in
their firm persuasion no accession of
importance or of value would have been
made if the rest of the world had been
added, by facilitating frequent inter-
course, served only to condense the
spirit. In a nation composed of such
materials, and in such a constant strife
for eminence and superiority, the
Athenians were unquestionably the
foremost in the race of fame.

Now, in reading this passage, if
we just substitute for the Greek

Employments of Italian Men of Letters. 703

the Italian republics, if we just
substitute for ancient Athens me-
dieval Florence, we shall have the
truekey tothe greatness of Danteand
Boccaccio, of Cimabue and Giotto;
we shall have the true explanation
of their legitimate influence and
lasting fame. See Naples, and die,
is the fitting exhortation unto those
for whom animal pleasures. and
physical delights form the sole end
of life. See Florence, and live, is
the moral that breathes in every
outline of Giotto, that burns in
every verse of Dante; live to imitate,
to emulate the forefathers who
have bequeathed you no mean and
nameless glory—live with the true
and earnest life by which they have
won for the creations of their genius
an unfading immortality !

The first great men of letters in
Italy were not mere men of letters ;
they were statesmen and judges,
diplematiote and warriors. Dante,
Petrarch, and Boccaccio were all
engaged in important embassies.
Dante, indeed, was ambassador no
less than fourteen times; he was
employed on an embassy to Rome
when he got the news that he was
sentenced to banishment; he was
engaged on a mission to Venice
shortly before his death. And it
would be difficult to mention a
single Florentine author of renown,
poet, historian, or novelist, who had
not been actively employed in the
service of the State. All their
writings, even the most imaginative,
are still imbued with an eminently
practical character. Nor was this
the least beneficial side of their in-
fluence on their English imitators
and admirers. The criticism of
Mr. Arthur Hallam may seem at the
first glance to savour of over-refine-
ment, but it is strictly true that our
literature has passed through three
periods, an Italian, a French, and
a German era; that in the first it
exhibited a character at once prac-
tical and imaginative ; in the second
it became practical, but ceased to
be imaginative ; and now, reflecting
the characterof its German models, it
is once more imaginative, but no
longer practical. The first historian
of our literature who shall bear this
clearly in mind, who shall cease to
dissert on Elizabethan and Georgian
eras, and substitute this natural

704

division for the artificial one hitherto
in vogue, will render a lasting service
to English letters.

A history of English literature,
written on this natural system,
would bring out in strong relief the
marvellous vicissitudes of literary
taste. Take Dante, for example.
He was a favourite poet of Chaucer.
He is the favourite poet of Tenny-
son. How often is he quoted by
Queen Anne’s wits? Just read
Addison’s Travels in Italy. That
work has always appeared to us
even more instructive for the things
that are not said, than for those
which it records. Addison was the
first man of letters of his day in
England: genial, many-sided, truly
Catholic. This work relates that
he started from Marseilles for Italy
on the 12th December, 1699. His
travels extend over the years 1700
to 1703. He passed through Genoa,
Pavia, Milan, Verona, Padua,
Venice, Ferrara, Rimini, Rome, and
Naples, returning by Florence.
Not one syllable does he utter about
Dante, or Petrarch, or Boccaccio,
or Machiavelli,, or Guicciardini, or
Boiardo, or Berni, or, indeed, with
two insignificant exceptions, about
any of thegreat names in Italian lite-
rature. The exceptions are, a passing
sentence at Ferrara, ‘here we were
shown Ariosto’s tomb ;’ and another
at Venice, ‘the boatmen are still
said to sing the stanzas of Tasso.’

A few years ago one of the
greatest scholars and critics of whom
France can boast, M. Ampére,
travelled through Italy, solely with
the view better to understand and
more fully to illustrate Dante, and
has told us all chat he saw and felt
in a charming volume, the Voyage
Daniesque. There we learn how
he goes to Pisa that he may view
the site of the Tower of Famine,
and study in the Campo Santo
the frescoes .reproducing Dante’s
images. He hies to Lucca to ap-
preciate the allusion to Santa Zita,
and to contemplate her tomb in the
church of San Frediano ; to Pistoja,
because there the factions of the
Bianchi and Neri took their rise.
At Florence he stands before the
portrait, and muses by the stone of
the stern Ghibelline; he enters the
Baptistery to recall the feat once
performed there. In Santa Maria

England’s Litetary Debt to Italy.

[ December,

Novella he is employed in tracing
Dante’s influence on Orgagna’s
pictures. When looking down on
the Val d’Arno he follows the de-
scription of the poet in his attempt
to trace the river's course. AtSienna
he examines the justice of his stric-
tures on the relative vanity of the
French and the Siennese. Perugia
recals his description of the climate.
Assisi, how he loved to celebrate
the privations and virtues of St.
Francis. Rome, how he has pic-
tured the throng at the jubilee.
Rimini, how the love and death of
Francesca have been consecrated by
his genius. Ravenna, how his last
days were spent, and his life termi-
nated there.

The feeling of almost idolatrous
veneration for Dante revealed in
every sentence of Ampére, is now
we apprehend, the common feeling
of European scholars. Even in
England the examples of individual
enthusiasm for ‘the Tuscan father’s
comedy divine,’ might seem to com-
oeee for the general neglect of

talian studies. Lord Brougham,
we think, led the way in his in-
augural address to the students of
the University of Glasgow. The
astonished ‘nations’ were then in-
formed that, next to the ‘ oration for
the crown,’ there was no better pre-
paration for pulpit or forensic elo-

uence than the verse that embodied
the sufferings of Ugolino and the
scorn of Farinata. rd Macaulay
and Thomas Carlyle, widely differ-
ing in their estimates of men and
books, herein agree. Sydney Smith
took to Dante in his oldage; Robert
Hall sought to soothe the agonies of
his rackmg pain by the perusal of
his verse. The learned principals of
dissenting colleges, and the learned
head of the Romish hierarchy, vie
with each other in their admiration
of his unrivalled descriptive powers,
his keen relish for nature, the mar-
vellous interpenetration of the
loftiest idealism with shrewd prac-
tical common sense. Of his trans-
Jators the name is Legion. Nor,
we may add, is this Dante-worship
less fervent in other lands. The
most illustrious for science, the
most exalted in rank, swell the
number of the devotees. If there
be any man in the nineteenth cen-
tury who emphatically deserves the

2 reac r YS Tse ”

1859.]

praise which Dante has bestowed
on Aristotle, that he is ‘maestro di
color che sanno,’ the master of all
the learned, it is Alexander von
Humboldt. In the second volume
of his Kosmos he has stated that the
Divine Comedy may be said to form
an epoch in the history even of
natural sciences, from the interest
and the charms which the poet's
descriptions lent to natural scenery.
And the most faithful and spirited
translation that has yet appeared is
the German version of a one
European sovereign, King John of
Saxony.

In speaking of the practical ele-
ment in Italian literature, we have
said that the first great Florentine
writers were not mere writers, that
they were either statesmen or judges,
or diplomatists or warriors ; but
they were all something else. With-
out a single exception they all were
merchants. A nominal connexion
at least with commerce was deemed
a necessary qualification for office in
a great commercial State. A noble-
man who was nothing but a noble-
man, was formally excluded from
power and place. Strange as the
thing may seem to us, very foreign
to our traditions and experience, his
only chance of advancement lay in
entering one of the guilds or trading
companies of his native city. He
must publicly renounce the habits
of his order—the good old feudal
customs of robbing and ravishing,
and burning and murdering—and he
must publicly profess his willing-
ness to contribute to the wants, and
facilitate the intercourse, of his
fellow-men. Dante himself, the

father of modern poetry, the bard,

of hell, of purgatory, and of para-
dise, was a chemist and druggist
before he became, and in order to
become, a diplomatist. Doubtless
he, with the greatest of his country-
men, felt what, four centuries later,
Addison so beautifully expressed :

I look upon high-change to bea great
council, in which all considerable nations
have their representatives. Factors in
the trading world are what ambassadors
are in the politick world—they negotiate
affairs, conclude treaties, and maintain
a good correspondence between those
wealthy societies of men that are divided
from one another by seas and oceans or
live on the different extremities of a

Commercial Element in Italian Literature. 705

continent. I have often been pleased
to hear disputes adjusted between an
inhabitant of Japan and an alderman of
London, or to see a subject of the Great
Mogul entering into a league with one
of the Czar of Muscovy. Iam infinitely
delighted in mixing with these several
ministers of commerce, as they are dis-
tinguished by their different walks and
different languages.

Assuredly these old Florentine
‘ ministers of commerce,’ as Addison
would have termed them, obtained
in their counting-houses a peculiar
aptitude for the conduct of State
affairs. The story is well known of
Pope Boniface the Eighth, who, on
finding that all the thirteen ambas-
sadors sent by different govern-
ments to his court were Florentines,
exclaimed, ‘ Why these Florentines
form a fifth element in creation!’

An examination of the influence
of the literature of Italy upon that
of England within such narrow
limits as those of the present article,
can do little more than hastily record
the names of the chief writers, mark
the epochs of theirauthority amongst
us, and suggest a few of the inquiries
to which it would lead, and which it
is likely to illustrate. It necessarily
embraces the influence of the two
earliest and greatest Italian poets,
Dante and Petrarch, on the whole
course of English poetry. The in-
fluence of Boccaccio and the other
novelists both on our prose literature
and on our dramatic and narrative
poetry. The influence of Ariosto
and Tasso and the other writers of
ao romance on Spenser and
his contemporaries in former times,
on Scott and his imitators in our
own age.

The influence of the Italian pas-
toral drama, of the Aminta of Tasso
and the Pastor Fido of Guarini, as
reflected above all in such poems as
the Masque of Ben Jonson, and in
all poems of that class, in which
Milton’s Comus shines forth with
surpassing brightness. The influ-
ence (not of the most beneficial
kind) of Marini and his school, all
glare and glitter, all antitheses and
point, never, happily, so dominant
with us as in France, where it fell
under the lash of Moliére, yet strong
enough to mar the effect of Habing-
ton’s pone to exaggerate and dis-
tort the play of Cowley’s fancy.

England’s Literary Debt to Italy.

The influence of the drama, which
must not be overlooked, when we
remember that the Adamo of
Andreini contributed, if not to sug-

est the idea, certainly to exhibit to
Tilton the scheme of, and even to
furnish many of the incidents in, the
Paradise Lost. When we add to
this the influence of Machiavelli
and the Italian political writers on
= speculation throughout
turope and in England, as else-
where, during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries; that of Sarpi
on the ecclesiastical history of all
Protestant countries since the Re-
formation; and of Giannone on the
historical inquiries of Hume, Ro-
bertson, and Gibbon in the last
century, the turn given to Mr.
Bentham’s speculations, and the
formule which he derived from
Beccaria’s treatise on rewards and
punishments, these all combine to
show that graver as well as lighter
themes are included in this inquiry.

We have already referred to the
Italian tastes and studies of the
father of our own poetry—of Chau-
cer—and to the admiration which he
expresses for Dante and Petrarch ;
but his-obligations to Boccaccio are
even greater. From the ninth tale
of the seventh day he took the
Merchant's tale; the first tale of
the eighth day is the source of the
Shipmanne’s tale; the fifth tale of
the last day is the original of the
Merchant’s tale, and the last of
that day and of the whole Deca-
meron, the story of Griselda, is the
one assigned by Chaucer to the
Clerke of Oxenford, perhaps the
most touching in the Canterbury
Tales. It was not, however, till two
centuries later that the Italian in-
fluence on our literature reached its
height. Ina passage often quoted
from Puttenham’s Arte of English
Poesy, published in 1589, it is said
that

In the latter end of King Henry the
Eighth’s reign sprang up a new com-
pany of courtly makers, of whom Sir
Thomas Wyatt the elder, and Henry,
Ear] of Surrey, were the two chieftains ;
who, having travelled into Italy, and
there tasted the sweet and stately mea-
sures and style of the Italian poesy, as
novices newly crept out of the schools
of Dante, Ariosto, and Petrarch, they
greatly polished our rude and homely
manner of poetry.

[December,

Surrey and Wyatt found in their
Italian models something far higher
and nobler than ‘ sweet and stately
measures.’ Dante and Petrarch,
the two great founders, are the two
great representatives of modern
poetry. They stand to their readers
in a position of direct individuality.
In the ancient world the man was
lost in the citizen. You would con-
trast rather than compare the Divine
Comedy with the Iliad or the
Odyssey. ‘Sing, O Goddess! the
wrath of Achilles, the son of Peleus,’
is the invocation of the Grecian
bard, and he then vanishes for ever
from our sight: he speaks no more,
he no more is heard, but the prayer
has been heard and answered, and
forth from heaven the goddess pours
her celestial strain. ie different
with Dante. All things in heaven
and earth—all that can be dreamt
of in his philosophy—are brought
into direct relation with himself—
Dante the scholar, Dante the lover,
Dante the partisan, Dante the
Christian. For he is the poet of
religion, of internal religion, of the
religion of the heart, of personal
responsibility. His poetry—high,
grave, solemn, authoritative, moni-
tory—never was, never could be ex-
tensively popular, for Dante is the
poet of the thinker, while Petrarch
is the poet of the lover, and Ariosto
the poet of the people. It is in the
pages of Petrarch that we best see
what love has done for modern
poetry. It has given a wholly dif-
ferent colouring to female life. In
antiquity, the ideal, the poetic side
of life was all the man’s; hard,
heavy drudgery was woman’s inex-
orable fate. How completely all
this was reversed; how the old
Gothic veneration for the female
sex, the increasing worship of the
Virgin, the associations of cloistral
life, combined to create a relation
directly opposed to that of the
Greek and Roman world—all this
is best seen in the verse of Petrarch.
Whilst the poems of Ariosto reflect
the first in a gay and sportive, the
second in a serious style—the great
struggle of the Middle Ages be-
tween the Moslem and Christian
powers, and the popular feelings
and traditions which transformed
the real into a mythical Charle-
magne. It would be unjust, how-

1859.]

ever, to give any feebler character
of the chief Italian poets when we
can quote the noble passage from
Mrs. Browning’s Vision of Poets.
There we are told how

Spenser droop’d his dreaming head
(With languid sleep-smile you had said,
From his own verse engendered)

On Ariosto’s, till they ran

Their curls in one.—The Italian

Shot nimbler heat of bolder man

From his fine lids. And Dante, stern
And sweet, whose spirit was an urn
For wine and milk, poured out in turn.

Hard-souled Alfieri ; and fancy-willed
Boiardo, who with laughter filled
The pauses of the jostled shield.

And Berni, with a hand stretched out
To sleek that storm. And, not without
The wreath he died in, and the doubt
He died by, Tasso! bard and lover,
Whose visions were too thin to cover
The face of a false woman over.

And Petrarch pale,
From whose brain-lighted heart were
thrown,
A thousand thoughts beneath the sun,
Each lucid with the name of One.

It was from having travelled into
Italy that Surrey and Wyatt ac-
quired such a taste for the stately
measures and style which they
transferred to our own literature.
To the same cause we owe so many
Italian subjects and so many Italian
allusions. Chaucer, Lydgate, Surrey,
Wyatt, Sir Philip Sidney, Milton,
Gray, Horace Walpole, Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu, Goldsmith (it
was at Padua that Goldie took his
degree of Doctor of Medicine),
these in former times, and in the
present century Byron, Frere,
Rogers, Moore, Leigh Hunt, Shel-
ley, Keats, Barry Cornwall, the
Brownings, aud Landor—the mere
enumeration of these names will
suggest associations as Italian as
they are English. We have already
referred to the influence of Italian
historians as reflected in the pages
of Robertson, Hume, and Gibbon;
but we have Gibbon’s express testi-
mony that to an Italian tour we owe
the first idea of his great work. ‘It
was,’ he says in the last sentence,
‘among the ruins of the Capitol that
I first conceived the idea of a work
which has amused and exercised
near twenty years of my life.’

It would far exceed our present

VOL. LX. NO. CCCLX.

The Influence of Italian Residents in England.

707

limits to show what the study of
antiquities and art owes to the resi-
dence in Italy of Hamilton or Mil-
lingen or Gell; but the contempo-
raries of Mr. Layard may not forget
that in a youth spent in Florence
were fostered the tastes to which
we must ascribe the discovery of
ancient Nineveh.

Less evident than the Italian im-

ressions received by Englishmen
in Italy, has been the influence ex-
ercised upon English literature and
society by the residence of remark-
able Italians in England. John
Florio, Joseph Baretti, and Ugo
Foscolo may be regarded as the best
specimens of Italian scholars known
to the contemporaries of Shak-
speare, of Dr. Johnson, of Scott and
Byron. And all three—Florio ‘ the
resolute’ (for so he was termed in
his own day) ; Baretti, the author of
the Literary Whip, in which he re-
morselessly satirized the literary
affectations of his own countrymen ;
and Ugo Foscolo, whose plain speak-
ing astonished even Sir Walter
Scott, seem to have been charac-
terized by a bluntness of manner
widely removed from our ideas of
Italian suavity. Ugo Foscolo, by
his writings in the Seana
Quarterly, and Westminster Re-
views, but still more through his
friendship with Lord Holland, and
connexion with the whole Holland
House set, has been mainly instru-
mental in promoting a more pro-
found and -philosophical study of
Dante and Petrarch. To many an
Italian exile the late Lord Holland
was, what Sir Philip Sidney proved
himself to the Italian refugees of a
former age, the patron and protec-
tor, the kind host and generous
friend; but with no name will his
memory be so closely linked as with
that of Ugo Foscolo.

The Englishman in Italy, The
Italian in England—such are the
titles of two exquisitely beautiful

oems among the dramatic lyrics of
Sehat Browning. In the first he
exhibits his wonderful power of
minute observation, of faithful de-
scription of external scenery; in the
second, his gift of revealing the
hidden thoughts and feelings of
men; in both the energy of his
robust though often too rugged
genius. Many a strange and yet

3A

708

untold romance is suggested by the
mere title of these poems. What a
life of adventure, for example, was
that of Robert Dudley, the able and
inventive son of the haughty Leices-
ter, who carried to the Tuscan Court
the blighted fortunes of his family,
and an engineering talent that pro-
claimed him the Brunel or Stephen-
son of hisown age. What a strange
wild story is that of Antonio de
Dominis—‘ De Dominis, in the
plural,’ as old Bishop Halket says,
‘for he could serve two masters, or
twenty, if they would all pay him
wages !’ who came over to England,
was installed Dean of Windsor, and
admitted Master of the Savoy Hos-
pital in the Strand, was thence
decoyed over to Italy, ‘the eagle
flying away with the buzzard, and
dropping him at Rome.’ There he
died in prison, whether by fair death

Earthquakes.

[ December,

or by strangling was uncertain, but
his body was publicly burnt as that
of a heretic.

The Englishwoman in Italy has
been no less worthily represented
than the Englishman,—Lady Mary
Wortley onda in the last,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning in the
present century, have furnished us
with the most faithful pictures of
Italian life and manners, of Italian
aims and aspirations. Indeed, we
do not scruple to affirm that the
Casa Guidi Windows of Mrs.
Browning gives both a truer narra-
tive of the last Italian revolution,
displays a deeper insight into the
causes of its failure, and reflects
more vividly the political and reli-
gious state of the Italian populations,
than all the works of Farini, Gual-
terio, and all their followers or ad-
versaries put together.

J. Montgomery Srvart.

EARTHQUAKES.

‘Eee si muove. What if, when

4 starry Galileo uttered these
memorable words to the bigoted and
unbelieving Inquisitors, the globe
had moved, not, indeed, in the sense
that the philosopher meant, but
quaked under the influence of those
mysterious and unknown causes
which produce the astounding and
terrific phenomena of Earthquakes ?
Then, indeed, the sceptical Jesuits
—if they had not been whelmed
in yawning gulphs, or crushed
beneath falling columns — might
have admitted that the all-powerful
Being producing such phenomena
might also cause the globe to re-
volve. And it is worthy of remark,
that an a of great severity
occurred in Italy during the very
year (1633) in which Galileo was
Siought before the Inquisition at
Rome. At Mantua and Naples
much damage was done, and the
village of Nicolosi, at the foot of
Etna, was totally destroyed. For
Galileo, a bright light amidst his
fellows, lived in an age when storms
and tempests, thunder and light-
ning, flashing meteors, and, above
all, voleanic eruptions and earth-
quakes, were regarded either as in-
struments of punishment or as

awful portents of the fall of king-
doms or the destruction of tyrants.
Earthquakes wereespecially dreaded
on account of their destructiveness.
‘ We know, indeed,” says Butler, in
his Analogy of Religion, ‘ several of
the general laws of matter, and a
great part of the behaviour of living
agents is reducible to general laws,
but we know nothing in a manner
by what laws earthquakes become
the instruments of destruction to
mankind.’ The progress of science
and education has stripped astro-
nomical phenomena of many of the
superstitions which the vulgar and
uneducated attach to them. The
lightning has been controlled, elec-
tricity made to obey our mandates,
and storms have been brought in a
great measure under certain well-
established physical laws, but it is
only very recently that volcanic and
earthquake phenomena have been in-
vestigated by exact science ; and al-
though theory and speculation must
still enter largely into all attempts
to fathom the cosmical laws con-
nected with earthquakes, still much
has been done to enable us to arrive
at a tolerably just knowledge of the
nature of these phenomena.
Earthquakes have long engaged

1859.]

the attention of philosophers. The
works of Aristotle and Pliny con-
tain many passages and allusions to
them ; and innumerable books and
tracts, some abounding with extra-
ordinary, and curious, and occa-
sionally with shrewd speculations,
testify how interesting the study of
earthquake phenomena has always
been considered.

But, numerous as these investiga-
tions have been, it is equally certain
that the bibliography of earth-
quakes is singularly deficient in
scientific results of any value, the
staple of earthquake stories being
made up of gossip and accidents
that befel men, animals, and build-
ings, rather than of the phenomena
themselves.

This loose and _ inconclusive
method led the Committee of the
British Association for the Advance-
ment of Science to devote a sum of
money for the purpose of investigat-
ing earthquake phenomena, and
drawing up a report on their prin-
cipal features. The labour has been
excessive, and the results, for which
we are mainly indebted to Mr.
Robert Mallet, F.R.S., are ex-
tremely interesting. Four valuable
Reports have been made. The last
consists of a large volume contain-
ing records of nearly seven thou-
sand earthquakes, observed over
every known part of the globe, both
on land and ocean, from 285 years
B.c. to A.D. 1850.

As may be supposed, the records
of early observed earthquakes do
not present that scientific exactitude
desired by modern physicists anxious
to explain earthquake phenomena ;
but nevertheless, the great mass of
observations has enabled Mr. Mallet
to arrive, by careful discussion, at
results of great interest, and to him
are we mainly indebted for the fact
that seismology (from ceiopos, an
earthquake) has become an exact
science.

Before, however, giving any ac-
count of the deductions from the
6831 recorded earthquakes, we pur-
pose laying before our readers some
of the most striking phenomena
noted in the Catalogue.

During the first three centuries
of historic time—according to our
commonly accepted chronology—
there are no earthquake records ;

Earthquake Phenomena.

709

and while between a.c. 1700 and
a.c. 1400 there are a few scattered
facts, there is again, from a.c. 1400
to a.c. goo, nearly a period of five
hundred years of perfect blank,
followed again, with a few excep-
tions, by another blank from a.c.
800 to a.c. 600. Even in the sue-
ceeding century, but two earth-
uakes are recorded; so that in
act, records of any value for
scientific analysis may be said to
commence at the five hundredth
year before the Christian era.

The sacred writings abound with
allusions to earthquakes which oc-
casioned the destruction of cities ;
and Thucydides, Tacitus, Josephus,
Livy, Pliny, and Julius Obsequens,
make frequent mention of disasters
arising from these phenomena.
Thus, in the year a.c. 33 an earth-
quake occurred in Palestine, by
which 30,000 persons were killed.
Thirteen important cities were de-
stroyed in Asia Minor six years
before the Crucifixion of our Savi-
our; and Matthew, Luke, and
Eusebius have told us how the
earth quaked during that awful
tragedy. Passing on to the fifth
century, we find that the whole of
Europe was convulsed about that
period. In the year 446, earth-
o—. which lasted six monihs,

esolated the greater part of the

civilized world; and in 494 Lao-

dicea, Hierapolis, Tripolis, and
Agathicum, were overwhelmed. In
the middle of the sixth century
(562), bellowing noises proceeded
from mountains adjoining the Rhone,
and from the Pyrenees, followed by
the falling of huge rocks and sub-
terranean commotions. In 684 the
Japanese province of Josa was
visited by a terrible earthquake,
causing great destruction of life,
and the loss of 500,000 acres of
land, which sank into the sea. In
801 the Basilica of St. Paul at
Rome was destroyed by an earth-
quake felt over France, Germany,
and Italy. In 842 the greater part
of France was convulsed by shocks,
attended by awful subterranean
noises ; and it is worthy of remark,
that on this occasion we have the
first record of the phenomenon hav-
ing been followed by a very severe
epidemic, of which many persons
died. In 859 we read that upwards
342

710

of 1500 houses were thrown down
at Antioch; and in the following
year Holland was greatly con-
vulsed, and one of the mouths of
the Rhone suddenly closed. The
latter end of the ninth century
witnessed a terrific earthquake in
India, which destroyed 180,000
persons. This was preceded by an
eclipse of the sun, the falling of
showers of black meteoric stones,
and followed by great storms. In
1021 extensive areas in Southern
Germany, and especially Bavaria,
were devastated by an earthquake,
the wells were troubled, and the
water in many became red, like
blood. Great inundations were pro-
duced in many places, and igneous
meteors were observed. In 1089 a
terrible convulsion was felt over
England ; houses were seen to leap
upwards ; fruit trees were blasted ;
and the harvest was not gathered
until the goth November. In 1158
the Thames was dried up, so that it
could be passed dryshod; and in
1179 the earth in Durham swelled
up to a great height from nine in
the morning to the setting of the
sun, and then with a loud noise

sank down again, leaving pools of

water in various places. This, how-
ever, though extremely severe, was
far exceeded in intensity by a con-
vulsion in April, 1185, which de-
stroyed many buildings in England,
including Lincoln Cathedral. In
1348 shocks of great violence during
the winter months desolated Europe.
The earth opened in different places,
and pestilential exhalations came
forth. A rain of blood is mentioned
as having fallen in several localities.
In 1505, earthquakes, which lasted,
with scarcely any intermission, for
four weeks, day and night, occurred
in Cabul and Afghanistan. The
earth opened in many places, and
closed again, after throwing forth
water, which occupied the place of
dry land. Over an area of forty-
nine square miles the surface of the
earth was so altered and disturbed
that parts were raised as high as an
elephant above their former level,
and then sank as deeply below it.
In 1580, England, and especially
Kent, was visited by a terrible
earthquake. At Sandwich, the sea
was so much agitated that the ships
in harbour were dashed against one

Earthquakes.

[ December,

another. The same happened at
Dover. The great bells at West-
minster and other places tolled,
buildings were thrown down, and
immense damage was done. It is
recorded, that during the visitation
the heavens were serene, and the
air quite tranquil. In 1626, thirty
towns and villages in the Neapolitan
territory were destroyed by an
earthquake, and 17,000 persons lost
their lives. Clefts opened in the
ground, lakes were dried up, moun-
tains riven, forests overthrown, and
jets of water and mud thrown out
of the wells. The shock was ac-
companied by subterranean noises
and a smell of sulphur. In 1683
England was again convulsed. The
shocks were particularly violent in
Oxfordshire. Persons on the Cher-
well felt the boats in which the
were tremble beneath them, the fish
rushed about in great alarm, and
articles of domestic furniture were
moved from their places. Many
persons stated that they saw the
ignis fatuus before the earthquake.
he barometer was higher than it
had been for three years. In 1692 a
remarkable phenomenon was wit-
nessed in Jamaica. The island rose
in waves like the sea, and then sank
a little, permanently. At Port
Royal, three-fourths of the houses
were thrown down, 3000 persons
perished; and a piece of land of
about 1000 acres sank into the sea.
A strange accident happened to an
inhabitant of the island. He was
precipitated into one of the fissures,
and forcibly ejected, uninjured, by a
second shock. This year seems to
have been famous for earthquakes
over the globe. In Sicily, 49 towns
and villages, and 972 churches and
convents, were overthrown, and
93,000 persons lost their lives. The
earthquakes were accompanied by
fearful eruptions of Etna, Vesuvius,
and Hecla. Towards the close of
the seventeenth century, earth-
quakes were again very prevalent
in Europe, the oscillations were so
po as to rock people in their
eds, noises similar to those pro-
duced by grinding stones were
heard, and great damage done.

The early part of the eighteenth
century was also marked by very
violent earthquakes. In Japan
200,000 persons were killed in 1703 ;

1859.]

the following year the south of York-
shire experienced violent shocks ;
doors and furniture -were set in
motion, and a noise like the sighing
of wind was heard, though the air
was perfectly calm. The shocks
were preceded by a violent tempest.
In nena 1726, Sicily was
again devastated. A great part of
Palermo was destroyed. Four
churches, ten palaces, and 1600
houses were thrown down, and 6000
persons perished. The earth opened
and threw out burning sulphur and
red-hot stones, and the atmosphere
appeared as if on fire. The great
aye of Lisbon, which oc-
curred on the 1st of November,
1755» was preceded by an unusually
large number of earthquakes in
Europe, particularly during the
years 1749 to 1755. In 1750
(March 19), the earth in St. James’s
Park and elsewhere swelled up and
seemed on the point of opening.
Dogs howled dismally, fishes threw
themselves out of the water; one
person is recorded to have been
turned on his feet, and a girl had
her arm broken. This earthquake,

and another which occurred on the
20th of March, terrified the inha-
bitants of London to such a degree,

that to avoid the fatal effects of a
more terrible shock, predicted by a
madman for the 8th of April fol-
lowing, thousands of persons, par-
ticularly those of rank and fortune,
passed the night of the 7th of April
in their carriages and in tents in
Hyde-park.

A great number of strange meteo-
rological phenomena are recorded
as having been observed in October,
1755, throughout Spain and Portu-
gal. Indeed, for some time before
the Lisbon earthquake, accounts of
halos round the sun and moon,
igneous meteors, alterations in well
and river water, which generally
acquired an offensive odour, besides
violent thunder, lightning, and rain,
are to be found as having occurred
in almost all parts of Europe. These
phenomena, however, were most
remarkable in Spain, where the
well water was discoloured, rats
and reptiles came forth from their
holes terrified, and domestic ani-
mals were frightened and uneasy.

The great Lisbon earthquake was
first perceived at 9.38. a.m. The

Motion of Earth-Waves.

711

convulsion, one of the most violent
and widely extended on record,
produced terrible effects over a
space of the earth’s surface included
between Iceland on the north,
Mogador, in Morocco, on the south,
Téplitz, in Bohemia, on the east,
and the West India Islands on the
west. It was felt in the Alps, on
the shores of Sweden, in the West
Indies, on the Lakes in Canada, in
Ireland, Thuringia, and Northern
Germany. Takingthe area convulsed
at 3300 miles long, and 2700 miles
wide, which is equal to 7,500,000
square miles, and supposing the
motion only extended to a depth of
twenty miles, there must have been
150 millions of cubic miles of solid
matter put in motion, a mass which
conveys to the mind a bewildering
conception of the enormous power
of the originating impulse. Actual
shocks were not, however, felt over
the whole of this surface ; in some
laces agitation of the water, in
akes, canals, &c., being the only
sensible effect produced. The centre
of disturbance seems to have been
situated beneath the Atlantic Ocean,
a little west of the coast of Portugal.
In Portugal itself, and especially in
Lisbon, the most terrible destruc-
tion took place, partly owing, of
course, to its contiguity to the seat
of voleanic action, and partly to the
nature of the earth’s surface at that
lace. The shocks appear to have
een from west to east, and to have
lasted from one minute to ten
minutes.

The calculated rate of motion of
the earth-wave was 7955 feet per
second; at this rate the equatorial
circumference of the earth would
have been gone round in about
45 hours. At ten o'clock on the
same day, the north-west portion of
Africa was violently convulsed ;
near Morocco a mountain opened
and swallowed a village, with 8000
or 10,000 people. At 11.30 Milan
was shaken, the lamps swung in the
churches; and about the same time
a noise like that of a great wave
breaking on the shore was heard in
Sweden and Norway, followed by
shocks which shook the furniture in
the houses. The springs in the
Pyrenees were affected, and in the
Alps some wells became salt.

he latter part of the eighteenth

712

century was marked by numerous
violent earthquakes. On the 27th
of November, 1776, the Kentish
coast experienced several shocks.
The day was perfectly calm. Fur-
niture was moved at Canterbury,
Dover, and Ashford. Church bells
rang, and rumbling noises were
heard. In January, 1780, Sicily
was again convulsed, and Etna,
which had been tranquil for four-
teen years, broke forth, and con-
tinued in violent eruption until the
16th of June, accompanied by
frightful noise. At Florence, Faenza,
and Marseilles, the earth rose seve-
ral times, and the Mediterranean
and Swiss lakes were agitated in
various localities. Passing over
many violent earthquakes, we come
to the year 1783, when a frightful
convulsion, which proved fatal to
40,000 persons, desolated Calabria
and Sicily. This earthquake, un-
paralleled for its duration, for it
may be said to have lasted until 1786,
abounds with interesting pheno-
mena. Fortunately for science,
these phenomena were observed
with great care by various trust-
worthy persons, sent by the King
of Naples to the scene of the disas-
ters, and by Sir William Hamilton,
who surveyed the country, at con-
siderable personal risk, before the
shocks had ceased. The earthquake
commenced on the 5th of February,
and between that period and the
end of July the most violent shocks
were experienced. The subsequent
convulsions were comparatively
slight. All the towns and villages
in Calabria were shaken with tre-
mendous violence. At first those
built on loose detrital foundations
were laid low, while others situated
on rocks, though greatly shaken,
for the most part remained standing.
But strange to say, the earth-wave
in March produced a_ contrary
effect. The ground yawned through-
out the convulsed district in a
frightful manner. Statues and
obelisks were twirled on their
pedestals to such a degree as to give
rise to the supposition that the earth
had undergone a twisting move-
ment. But Mr. Mallet, with greater
probability, asserts that this move-
ment of the stones arose from the
centre of gravity of the body lying
to one side of a vertical plane in the

Earthquakes.

[ December,

line of shock; and this is partly
confirmed by the circumstance that
at the monastery of St. Bruno stones
were moved horizontally upon
lower stones, without the position
of the latter being altered.

The sea in the Straits of Messina
was violently agitated, the quay
sank fourteen inches below its
original level, and the houses in the
vicinity were much fissured. The
course of rivers was arrested for a
moment, and then renewed with
such violence as to tear away every
obstruction. In Calabria the dark-
ness was so great that lights were
obliged to be used. A disagreeable
odour was very perceptible. Many
persons were afflicted by nausea.
During the violent period of the
earthquake the weather was still
and gloomy, and Vesuvius, Strom-
boli, and Etna were perfectly quiet.

In the winter of 1797, the ter-
ritory of Quito was desolated by a
terrific earthquake. No less than
40,000 persons are said to have been
destroyed on this occasion. The
earthquake was preceded by loud
subterranean noises. The great
voleano of Tunguragua, which usu-
ally acts as a safety valve to this
highly Plutonic region, became still,
and the smoke of Pacto, another
volcano seventy-five leagues distant,
disappeared suddenly into the crater.
The movements of translation ac-
companying this and other earth-
quakes in South America, presented
striking and most complicated phe-
nomena. ‘ Avenues of trees,’ says
Humboldt, ‘were moved without
being uprooted, fields bearing dif-
ferent kinds of cultivation became
intermixed; and articles belonging
to one house were found among the
ruins of others at a considerable
distance, a discovery which gave
rise to some perplexing law-suits.’

The winter of 1803 was attended
by numerous violent earthquakes
in Europe. Onthe 13th December,
Mont Blanc was violently shaken,
and a mass of ice 100 feet in height
was precipitated from its sides.
Shortly after this occurrence, the
Breven mountains, rising from the
Valley of Chamouni, suffered the
same concussions, and great masses
of rock were detached and rolled
into the vale below. The force
on this occasion must have been

1859.]

enormous to have produced such
effects. In 1816, we find that In-
verness and the country round for
100 miles suffered considerably from
an earthquake, The spire of the
church was greatly shaken, and six
feet at the top twisted round, so
that the angles of the octagon coin-
cided with the middle of the faces
of the part below. Doors swung
toand fro. Bellsrang. The water
of Loch Leven was rendered muddy.
Many persons experienced sickness.
Dogs howled, and birds were scared
from their roosting places.

And here we may take occasion
to state that the Catalogue contains
many records of earthquakes in
Scotland, not indeed in recent
— accompanied by fatal results,

ut still testifying that that region
has been frequently visited by
shocks. And if we examine a geo-
logical map of Scotland we find,
from the two great bands of trap-
pean eruption, that the northern
part of our island was once a
veritable Zerra del Fuego convulsed
by fiery depths. Worthy of re-
mark, too, is the fact, that we are
indebted to Plutonic agencies for
those picturesque forms that charm
the tourist’s eye in Caledonia. The
marvellous peaks of Skye, and

Arthur's craggy bulk,
That dweller of the air, abrupt and lone,
overhanging Edinburgh, were
brought forth amidst convulsive
earthquake throes. Originally a
molten mass that came hissing from
the deep, amidst the rending of
rocks, and the roaring of flames,
Arthur’s seat cooled down into
that picturesque form from the
tranquil summit of which we now
gaze with delight on the broad
landscape. The castle of Edin-
burgh is built on another eleva-
tion born amidst earthquake par-
oxysms, and curiously enough, pre-
cisely where the Plutonic forces
raged most, upheaving crests and
pinnacles of trap rock, there history
informs us human warfare has been
most violent. For, on their com-
manding eminences warriors built
their strongholds. The castles of
Stirling, Dumbarton, and Dirleton,
stand on trap rocks, and the thunder

Plutonic Forces.

713

of battle was heard in those locali-
ties which in distant ages rocked
under the influence of earthquakes.

Reverting to the Catalogue, we
find that in 1808 a terrible earth-
quake in Catania was accompanied
by the unusual phenomenon of
walls opening horizontally, so that
the light of the moon penetrated
for an instant before the fissures
closed.

In 1811, Carolina, and the valleys
of the Mississippi, Ohio, and the
Arkansas, were visited by a tre-
mendous earthquake, remarkable
from the absence of volcanoes in
those regions. A vast area was
affected, many persons were killed,
and the effect produced on the trees,
as theearth-wave passed through the
forests, is represented as very extra-
ordinary. Although the air was
perfectly still, trees were twisted
and their boughs wrenched off by
the transit of theearth-wave; others,
though undisturbed, were killed;
and when Sir C. Lyell visited the
locality in 1846, he observed that
zones of trees affected by the earth-
quake of 1811 were dead and leaf-
less, though standing erect and
entire.

But probably no earthquake of
which we have any record, exhibits
the tremendous volcanic force so
forcibly as that which occurred in
1822, in Chili. The centre of dis-
turbance was near Valparaiso; that
city was greatly injured, and the
coast along a line of 1200 miles was
shaken. But a more wonderful
phenomenon was the permanent
elevation of the land to a height of
between two and seven feet over an
area of 100,000 square miles, or
within one-sixth of that of Great
Britain and Ireland. Some idea of
the force exercised to accomplish
this, may be formed from a caleula-
tion made by Sir C. Lyell, that the
mass uplifted contained fifty-seven
cubic miles in bulk, equal to a
conical mountain two miles high,
with a circumference at the base of
nearly thirty-three miles—or, assum-
ing the great pyramid of Egypt to
weigh six million tons, the mass up-
heaved by this earthquake, exceeded
the weight of 100,000 pyramids.*

* See Lyell’s Principles of Geology for further interesting speculations respect-
ing this earthquake.

714
Records like these—and now it

must be borne in mind we are no
longer dealing with doubtful autho-
rities—testify, that however much
other _— causes which have
affected our globe may be modified,
earthquakes still are mighty agents
in changing the earth’s crust, and
the terrible earthquake in the Nea-
politan territory in the winter of
1857-8, attests that the subterra-
nean force is far from being ex-
hausted. This earthquake occurred
too recently to be included in the
British Association Earthquake
Catalogue, but our article would be
incomplete were it to be omitted
from the list of remarkable earth-
quake phenomena.

The tremendous visitation was
preceded by subterraneous agita-
tion. Vesuvius was in a state of
chronic eruption for two years.
The wells of Resina were dried up in
the autumn of 1857. Fetid gaseous
exhalations burst from the streams
near Salandro, the waters of which
attained a boiling temperature. The
atmosphere for several weeks before
the earthquake was unusually calm,
and a light, like that proceeding
from a misty moon, was seen in
places where the earthquake was
subsequently extremely violent.
Dogs howled, and strange hissing
sounds were heard.

The first decided intimation of
the impending catastrophe occurred
on the 7th December, when a slight
shock threw down the cone of
Vesuvius. It was hoped, and in-
deed expected, that this volcano
would, as of old, prove a safety
valve. But in place of the gorgeous
pillar of fire that dominated the
cone during the autumn, nothing
now appeared but a wreath of
smoke, and a lambent flame which
lighted Naples with a supernatural

glare, a convincing proof that the ‘

volcanic energies were about to ex-
pend their forces in another manner
and direction.

On the 16th December, at ten
p.M., the inhabitants of the Neapo-
litan States were made aware that
the terrible enemy was at their
deors. Soon, too soon, the ruin
came. At Naples, the furniture first,
then the walls, and next whole
houses rocked, while bells rang:
* Terremuoto—terremuoto,’ shrieked

Earthquakes.

[December,

the population, as they rushed
wildly reeling into the streets, in-
voking the aid of their favourite
saints. Then came the replica or
return earth-wave which hurled
them with irresistible force against
the tottering walls, occasioning in
many cases intense sickness. After
midnight several other shocks were
felt in the city, but although the
wildest panic reigned, during which
ruffians profited by the occasion to
plunder the deserted houses and
commit outrages, it was found when
daylight returned that no life had
been lost, and that the damage to
buildings was confined to staircases
having fallen, and walls having been
fissured.

But although Naples thus escaped
—ascribed by the superstitious to
the belief that the blood of St.
Januarius had liquified of its own
accord—ruin, wide-spreading, ter-
rible, and awful as that fore-
shadowed in the Apocalypse, fell
upon the land. Throughout the
provinces, and nearly in every com-
mune, buildings of all descriptions
were whelmed in common destruc-
tion, and so sudden and violent were
the shocks, that thousands of human
beings had not time to escape from
the houses, beneath the ruins of
which they were buried. In Potenzo,
a town of 15,000 inhabitants, about
ninety miles south-east of Naples,
not a house remained in a habitable
state. ‘Our pens,’ say the writers
of the official reports of the awful
calamity, ‘fall in terror from our
hands ;’ and no wonder, when we
are assured by the same authorities
that this terrible and wide-spreading
earthquake killed upwards of 30,000
human beings, besides injuring
thousands who were buried beneath
the ruins, in some cases for days
before being exhumed.

The phenomena attending this
tremendous visitation were most
remarkable. The ground in many
districts is stated to have rolled like
waves. At Resina the entire town
and neighbourhood were in a state
of vibration from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M.
on the 30th December. At Naples,
from the 16th to the goth of that
month, eighty-four shocks were felt,
and these would in all probability
have been attended with great de-
struction and loss of life had not

1859.]

Vesuvius opened after the 16th
December. ‘For a day or two,’
says a spectator, writing from
Naples, ‘the mountain had been
singularly undemonstrative, but on
the very night of the earthquake,
subsequent to the shocks, a new
vent was opened, and a great quan-
tity of smoke and stones was
thrown out. A few days after, a
sound, as of a violent discharge of
artillery, was heard, and a huge
column of stones was shot up. It
would be useless to speculate on
what might have been the conse-
quences had this valve not been
opened ; but one fact is undeniable,
that Naples has escaped with shak-
ings of the houses.’

Mariners at sea state that they
felt the shocks as if their barks had
struck upon the rocks; others as if
they had been twirled suddenly
round in the vortex of a whirlpool.
The effect of earthquakes upon the
sea has been much studied by Mr.
Mallet. He states that when the
earth-wave passes under the deep
water of the ocean, it probably
shows no trace of its progress at
the surface,‘ but as it arrives in
soundings, and gets into water more
and more shallow, the undulation
of the bottom the crest of the long,
flat-shaped earth-wave brings along
with it—carries upon its back, as it
were—a corresponding aqueous un-
dulation, slight, long, and flat, upon
the surface of the water. This,
which may be called the forced sea-
wave of earthquakes, and which has
no proper motion of its own, com-
municates the earthquake shocks to
ships at sea, as if they had struck
upon a rock.’

The general direction of the
earth-waves south-east of Naples
seems to have been from north to
south, crossed, however, not un-
frequently, by other waves from east
to west. In both cases the waves
recoiled, producing the replica or
return shock, involving certain de-
struction to every object within its
influence. At Potenzo the motion
was violently undulatory, accom-
panied by vertical and leaping move-
ments, causing furniture to bound
upwards. Mr. Mallet, who was
commissioned by the Royal Society
to examine the earth-shaken pro-
vinces, informs us that Saponara, a

The Neapolitan Earthquake.

715

town of 8000 inhabitants which ex-
SS return shocks, was abso-
utely reduced to powder ; and pho-
tographs mene under his direc-
tions show in many instances the
extraordinary apparent vorticose
effect of the motion. At Padulaa
a now before us repre-
sents a large stone statue of the
Virgin turned on its pedestal; and
lamps and chandeliers suspended
from the ceiling were in many in-
stances observed suddenly to swing
at right angles to their first direction
of motion. Throughout extensive
areas the land was seamed with deep
fissures arising from land-slips or
other secondary causes, and roads
were moved two hundred feet from
their original positions.

Although the earthquake was not
felt sensibly at Rome, the stoppage
of several delicate instruments in
the Observatory of that city, leads
the Rev. Director, Padre Secchi, to
the conclusion that the earthquake
wave passed under that city. Mr.
Mallet traced it north of Naples,
until the effects from it became lost
in the alluvium near Terracina ; but
in the parallel limestone hills the
results were observable as far as
Sevmonta.

It would be easy to cite additional
facts illustrating the damage caused
by this earthquake. Enough, how-
ever, has been said to show that the
phenomena attending it were of the
most awful and ruinous nature ; for
besides the destruction to property
and life, the catastrophe, occurring
as it did in mid-winter, caused the
poor houseless inhabitants, who were
obliged to encamp in the open
ground, great additional suffering,
further aggravated by their indo-
lent and superstitious habits. No
wonder that the Neapolitan dreads
the winter earthquake.

We have now given the salient
phenomena observed in connexion
with earthquakes. All are wonder-
ful, many most perplexing. Let us
now see what results Mr. Mallet
draws from the records.

Divided by chronological periods,
it appears that the end of the third
century first gives evidence of nume-
rical increase; and earthquakes
seem to steadily progress in num-
bers up to 1850. But the rapid and
vast extension, particularly in the

716

first half of the nineteenth century,
affords no proof that there has been
a corresponding, or even any, in-
crease in the frequency of earth-
— phenomena. For, as the

eport truly observes, the Cata-
logue of Earthquakes is not only a
record of these phenomena, but also
of the advance of human enterprise,
travel, and observation. Indeed, to
assume that earthquake disturbance
has been continually on the increase,
would be to contradict all the analo-
gies of the physics of our globe.
These analogies might lead us to
suppose that, like other violent pre-
sumed periodical actions, that pro-
ducing earthquakes was becoming
feeble, and the series of earthquakes
would consequently be found a con-
verging one. Were thisso, however,
to any considerable extent, we should
not find the vast expansions of re-
sults which the last three hundred
years present. ‘This expansion, it
is believed, just keeps pace with that
of contemporaneous human pro-
gress ; for the increase in the num-
ber of recorded earthquakes always
coincides with the epochs of in-
creased impulse and energy in
human enterprise. It is therefore
pretty certain that earthquake ac-
tion has remained nearly uniform
throughout historic time ; thus show-
ing that if the interior of our globe
is in a liquid or melting state, the
cooling process is extremely slow.
Earthquakes donot seem in any part
of the world, as far as originating
impulse is concerned, tobe connected
with the superficial character to the
greatest known depth of geological
formations. While earthquake
waves diverge from axial lines that
are generally of the older rock for-
mations, and often of crystalline
igneous rocks, or actively volcanic,
they penetrate thence formations of
every age and sort, and are direct
agents of elevation.

Viewing as a whole, and at asingle
glance, the distributionof earthquake
energy over the entire globe, it pre-
sents, according to Mr. Mallet, a
vast loop, or band, round the Pacific,
a more broken and irregular one
around the Atlantic, with subdivid-
ing bands, and a broad band stretech-
ing across Europe and Asia, and
uniting them.

Thus, an apparent preponderance

Earthquakes.

[ December,

of seismic surface seems to lie about
the temperate and torrid zones, both
northern and southern ; but, as the
Report observes, extended observa-
tion is yet required in high latitudes,
and particularly in the Antarctic
regions, where we know violent
volcanic force exists, before it can
be affirmed that there is a real pre-
ponderance extending over any one
or more great climatic bands or
zones of the earth’s surface.

It may, however, be confidenily
assumed that there are few parts of
the earth’s crust that are not con-
vulsed by earthquakes. The study
of seismic force may indeed be
said to concern us intimately ; for
though we do not suffer from earth-
quakes to a fatal extent, yet their
occurrence in a slight degree in
Scotland and the north of England
shows that volcanic action exists
beneath Great Britain.

The remarkable fact has been ob-
served, that earthquakes are more
prevalent and violent in winter than
during summer.

Taking the whole of Europe, the
preponderance of earthquakes dur-
ing winter is very marked, the Cata-
logue showing that during fifteen
centuries and a half,857 earthquakes
occurred during spring and summer,
and 1165 during autumn and winter.
Of 255 earthquakes in England and
Scotland, 44 occurred during the
spring months, 58 during the sum-
mer months, 79 during the autumn
months, and 74 during the winter
months. And with respect to earth-
quakes in the Italian peninsula, it
is recorded that in several instances
no alarm was felt when they broke
out during summer, while those in
winter inspired the greatest terror.
The Catalogue further shows that
earthquakes are more numerous and
violent in those localities where
volcanoes are most active. The
connexion between volcanic and
seismic effort is so obvious, although
the nature of the connexion is but
little understood, that we are quite
pa to find that the most vio-
ent earthquakes have occurred pre-
cisely where volcanic centres stand
close in rank. An earthquake in a
non-volcanic region may, in fact, be
viewed as an uncompleted effort to
establish a voleano. The forces of
explosion and impulse are the same

1859.]

in both ; they differ only in degree of
energy, or in the varying sorts and
degrees of resistance opposed to
them.

Stretching in a vast horse-shoe
convex to the south, from Burmah
and Pegu, and surrounding the
great island of Borneo, with an in-
tervening belt of sea, and reaching
round to Formosa on the north-
west, we have an almost continuous
girdle of volcanoes and lofty moun-
tains. Every island of the group,
including Java and Sumatra, is
shaken by formidable and frequent
earthquakes. Nothing even in South
America or Mexico appears to rival
the grandeur of volcanic energy and
sympathetic earthquake action of
that region. In 1815 the thundering
of Tomboro, in Sumbava, was heard
nearly 1000 miles away (through
the earth no doubt), and the ashes
or tufa-dust floating through the air
converted the ordinary light of noon
into darkness 300 miles distant in
Java, and were precipitated at sea
a thousand miles from the point of
ejection, while vast tracts of country,
with inhabited towns, suddenly be-
eame engulphed and disappeared
during periods of eruption which
may be said to have been almost
continuous.

The great shock, or earth-wave,
observes Mr. Mallet, is a true un-
dulation of the solid crust of the
earth, travelling with immense velo-
city outwards in every direction
from the point vertically above the
centre of impulse. If this be at
small depth below the surface, the
shock will be felt principally hori-
zontally ; but if the origin be pro-
found, the shock will be felt more
or less vertically, and in this case
two distinct waves may be felt, the
first due to the originating normal
wave, the second to the transversal
waves vibrating at right angles
to it.

The earth-wave, as observed in
Europe; is supposed to travel from
W. 2° 39’ N. to E. 2°39’ 8. The
velocity or transit of the earth-wave
or shock has never been precisel
ascertained, but it is computed wit
great probability to average 1760
feet per second. Humboldt, a high
authority on all matters relating to
telluric phenomena, states the velo-
city to be from five to seven geogra-

_ Earthquake Theories.

717

phical (German) miles per minute
—equivalent to between twenty and
twenty-eight statute miles. In
great earthquakes, the wave travel-
ling at the rate of probably about
thirty miles per minute, takes fre-
quently ten to twenty seconds to
pass a given point.

Grants of money made by the
Royal Society and the British Asso-
ciation, have enabled Mr. Mallet to
make a great number of experi-
ments on the velocity of the earth-

wave through various _ strata.
Canisters and casks containing

powder were sunk in the earth at
distances varying from half a mile
to a mile from each other, and it
was found that the seismocope wave
passed through sand at the rate of
965, feet per second, and through
solid granite at the rate of 1661 feet
per second.

Want of observations renders it
of course difficult to arrive at any
just conclusion respecting the an-
nual number of earthquakes beneath
the ocean, but making every allow-
ance for imperfect information, the
disparity of relative numbers is such
as to warrant our estimating, with
some confidence, that the seismical
energy is manifested with much
greater power, for equal areas, upon
the dry land than upon the ocean
bed.

Contemporary with Mr. Mallet’s
valuable and interesting researches
are those of M. Perrey, who was
the first. to notice a singular con-
nexion between the phases of the
moon and earthquakes. By the
analysis of various catalogues of
earthquakes, he deduces

1.—That earthquakes occur more
frequently at the periods of new and
full moon.

2.—That their frequency increases
at the perigee and diminishes at the
apogee of the moon.

3.—That shocks of earthquake
are more frequent when the moon
is near the meridian than when
she is 90 degrees away from
it.

These conclusions point to the
existence of a terrestrial as well ‘as
an oceanic tide. The theory was so
novel as to lead the French Aca-
demy to appoint a commission to
report upon it. Among the mem-
bers was the late M. Arago, and

718

here is their explanation of M.
Perrey’s views :—

If, as is generally believed in the
present day, the interior of the earth is,
owing to its high temperature, in a
liquid or melted state, and if the globe
has buta comparatively thin solid crust,
the interior being deprived of solidity
is compelled to yield, like the superficial
mass of the ocean waters, to the attrac-
tive force exercised by the sun and
moon, and it acquires a tendency to
swell out in the direction of the rays of
these two bodies; but this tendency
meets with a resistance in the rigidity of
the solid crust, which occasions shocks
and fractures of the latter. The inten-
sity of this force varies, like the tides,
according to the relative position of the
sun and moon, and consequently ac-
cording to the moon’s age; and we
must also observe that as the tides ebb
and flow twice in the course of a lunar
day, at those hours which agree with
the passing of the moon over the meri-
dian, so the direction of the attraction
exercised upon a point of the interior
globe must change twice a day, accord-
ing as the point recedes or approaches
the meridian, the plane of which passes
through the centre of the moon.
Without entering into longer details,
we can easily conceive that if the
fusion of the interior mass of the globe
plays a part among the causes of earth-
quakes, then its influence may become
evident by a necessary connexion,
capable of observation, between the
occurrence of earthquakes and the cir-
cumstances which modify the moon’s
action upon the entire globe, or upon a
portion of it—namely, its angular dis-
tance from the sun, its real distance
from the earth, and its angular distance
from the meridian of the place, or, in
other words, the moon’s age, the time
of perihelion, and the hour of the lunar
day.

Another hypothesis connects mag-
netism with earthquakes. The
magnet is known to be periodically
affected in a very extraordinary
manner; magnetic storms, as they
are called, recurring at the same
hours. We also know that magne-
tism has a wonderful apparent con-
nexion with solar spots, which
increase and diminish with a perio-
dicity due probably to some occult
cosmical law ; and thus while it is
found that the sun, moon, and our
earth are in direct physical relation
to each other, and all are apparently
affected by magnetism—for our
satellite has a magnetic influence

Earthquakes.

[December,

on our planet—then it is not, per-
haps, too much to say that magne-
tism may affect earthquakes, and
that the latter may obey some
unknown magnetic law. At the
same time, while Humboldt was
willing to concede the possibility of
there being a connexion between
magnetic currents and earthquakes,
he has placed on record in Cosmos
that during the time he spent in
South America he only once found
that the magnetical inclination de-
creased during an earthquake. This
was in 1799, after a violent earth-
quake at Cumana, when the incli-
nation was diminished 90 centesi-
mal minutes, or nearly a whole
degree. During the three years
subsequent to 1799 that he passed
in South America, he states that he
never again met with a sudden alte-
ration of the magnetic inclination
which he could ascribe to earth-

uake phenomena, various as were
the directions in which the undu-
latory movement of the terrestrial
strata was propagated.

Passing from the regions of
theory to those of fact, the observa-
tions that have been made lead Mr.
Mallet to the conclusion that the
true definition of an earthquake is,
the transit of a wave of elastic
compression in any direction from
vertically upwards to horizontally
in any azimuth, through the surface
and crust of the earth from any
centre of impulse, or from more
than one, and which may be
attended with tidal and round waves
dependent upon the former, and
upon circumstances of position as
to sea and land.

Besides the frightful devastation
caused by earthquakes at the time
of their occurrence, they have con-
siderable effect on the outward
form of our globe. Thus the rising
of the earth's crust between Gothen-
burg and the North Cape, at the
rate of five feet in a century, is
believed to be due to seismic influ-
ence; while, on the other hand, the
depression of the land on the west
coast of Greenland and Denmark
and the Faroe Islands, proceeds from
the same cause. It is also supposed
that there are great areas of gradual
subsidence beneath the Pacific. A“
map accompanying the Earthquake
Catalogue, shows that the bands or

1859.]

zones of probable depression are
near the great seats of volcanic
activity, and that the latter have
generally subsiding areas at more
than oneside. Thus, in the Pacific,
the blue band is along the great
voleanic girdle from Celebes to
New Zealand, and thence stretches
between the line of suboceanic vol-
canic girdles from the New Hebri-
des to the Marquesas. And again,
the great volcanic horse-shoe girdle
of Sumbava is between the area of
subsidence in the China Sea, north
of Borneo, and the blue coral bands
north of Australia, which whole
continent, or at least its western
and northern parts, may probably
be subsiding also.

From the observations hitherto
made, Mr. Mallet considers that
general horizontal directions of
seismic movement upon large tracts
of the earth’s surface do not
exist. Indeed the apparent terrible
twisting motion occasioned by the
crossing of horizontal waves, is one
of the most common features of
earthquake phenomena. This is
the motion producing the nausea
which has been felt by human beings
and also by some domestic animals.
Although this consequence has been
questioned, the fact, as respects
man, admits of no doubt. Mr.
Mallet has direct testimony of per-
sons having been suddenly awakened
by an earthquake, and immediately
suffering nausea, amounting in many
instances to vomiting. And in the
late earthquake at Naples, many
instances were related to Mr. Mal-
let of persons having been made
sick by the shocks.

The general conclusions deducible
from the observations, are thus
summed up in the report :—

t. ‘The superficial distribution
of seismic ieanes over existing
terrestrial space, does not follow the
law of distribution in historic time,
and is not one of uniformity. There
is this resemblance, which, however,
is not a true analogy; that, as the
distribution is paroxysmal in time,
so it is local in space.

2. The normal type of superficial
distribution, is that of bands of vari-
able and of great breadth, with sen-
sible seismic influence extending
from 5° to 15° in width transversely.

3. These bands very generally fol-

Earthquake Zones.

low the lines of elevation which
mark and divide the great oceanic
or terra-oceanic basins of the earth’s
surface.

4. And in so far as these are fre-
quently the lines of mountain chains,
and these latter those of volcanic
vents, so the seismic bands are
found to follow them likewise.

5- Although the sensible influ-
ence is generally limited to the
average width of the seismic band,
paroxysmal efforts are occasionally
propagated to great superficial dis-
tances beyond it.

6. The sensible width of the
seismic band depends upon the
energy developed, and upon the
accidental geologic and topographic
conditions at each point along its
entire length.

7. Earthquake energy may be-
come sensible at any point of the
earth’s surface, its efforts being,
however, greater and more frequent
as the great volcanic lines of activity
are approached.

8. The surfaces of smallest or of
no known disturbance, are the cen-
tral areas of great oceanic or terra-
oceanic basins or saucers, and the
greater islands existing in shallow
seas.’

Mr. Mallet justly observes that
it is much to be regretted that the
scientific departments and bodies of
the chief civilized countries do not
unite and agree upon some uniform
system for observing earthquakes,
in order that the records might be
transmitted to some assigned loca-
lity for discussion. For until some
system of this kind be adopted, it
would be hopeless to deduce any
certain laws from earthquake phe-
nomena.

In the meanwhile, Mr. Mallet,
trusting that something of this
kind will be done, has paid great
attention to the dynamics of earth-
quakes, and the present Karthquake
Catalogue contains, in the form of
an appendix, valuable observations
upon instrumental seismometry,
and seismometers, upon the excel-
lence of which our future know-
ledge of earthquakes must in a
great measure depend. Very great
ingenuity has been displayed in the
construction of these instruments,
which are intended to show surface
perturbation and the passage of the

720

earth-wave. So exquisitely sensi-
tive are some seismometers that,
like the trembling peas on the tight
drumhead which tell the engineer of
insidious mining operations, their
slightest movement conveys a warn-
ing of grave import.

The study of earthquake laws
is of the highest interest and im-
portance to geology and terrestrial
physics, and as the information con-
tained in the Earthquake Cataloque
is not generally accessible, Mr.
Mallet has rendered good service
by reprinting from the third edi-
tion of the Admiralty Manual of
Scientific Inquiry, published this
year, his contribution On the Obser-

Some Account of Morocco.

[December,

vation of Earthquake Phenomena.
With this earthquake hand-book,
as it may be called, the traveller
who may happen to visit the great
seats of volcanic and seismic action
will be able, by following Mr.
Mallet’s lucid instructions, to con-
tribute largely to this interest-
ing branch of seience. We may
also state that Herr Yeitteles, of
the Imperial Academy of Vienna,
has lately published some very in-
teresting and valuable monographs
descriptive of Hungarian earth-
quakes in the Carpathian chain,
which throw considerable light
on the seismic phenomena of that

region.
C. R. Wetp.

SOME ACCOUNT OF MOROCCO.

HE late simultaneous movement

of France and Spain against
Morocco, coupled with the ob-
stinate determination of the Spanish
Government in rejecting all pro-
posals for accommodation, have
naturally turned the public atten-
tion towards that country, though
no very ready means exist for
gratifying curiosity. The olderand
more authoritative works cannot
always be procured, and, in the
language of to-day, might be
thought ‘slow.’ Either the bigoted
and barbarous character of the
people, the hardships that a stranger
must undergo, or some more occult
cause, have prevented modern
tourists from journeying thither,
at least beyond a flying visit from
Gibraltar to Tangier. Yet is Mo-
rocco worthy of more examination
than it has yet received. The ef-
fects of despotism are more dis-
tinctly marked there than elsewhere,
for its Government is perhaps the
most perfect autocracy that exists.
Its natural phenomena, whether
animal, vegetable, or mineral, offer
a rich field of exploration to the
scientific traveller, if such dared
venture thither. Its climate, its
natural riches, and above all its
position, render Morocco of great
importance, especially when it is
assailed without any very pressing
reason, and for motives not very
easy to solve. If Spain has a
superfiuity of wealth, 1t would be

best expended in discharging her
debts; if she has a plethora of
warlike means and appliances, they
would be more fitly employed in
strengthening Cuba, which is in a
state of chronic risk that filibusters
may possibly turn into an acute
danger while Spain is engaged in a
little filibustering on her own ac-
count; if a new spirit of enterprise
is animating the Spaniards, her two
West Indian colonies of Cuba and
Porto Rico, and her possessions in
the East, offer a more legitimate
sphere of action than an expedition
against Morocco; especially as the
Spaniards, left to themselves, may
probably fail. The motives that
actuated the Emperor of the French
in his late suspiciously timed pro-
ceedings against Morocco, are diffi-
eult to tell, for Ais mind is in-
scrutable. They may have been
part of a plan that consists in
creating a ‘ lodiie, double, toil, and
trouble’ for other nations, and one
would fancy for France herself,
merely to attract the world’s atten-
tion, and increase what is called
prestige, without any definite pur-
pose beyond causing a sensation ;
or he may be contemplating schemes
of conquest and permanent occu-
ese in which Spain, after being
eft in the lurch for the present,
may, if successful,
find herself playing the dig-
nified part of catspaw. Under
Louis XIV. and the first Napoleon,

eventually

1859.]

Egypt has been the subject of spe-
culative schemes or of actual in-
vasion: for the better part of two
centuries she has been a frequent
dreamof French ambition. But since
the great changes which the last
forty years have witnessed in mari-
time and industrial affairs, Morocco
in point of position may vie with
Egypt, while in natural wealth she
ave her. With coasts extending
along both the Atlantic and the
Mediterranean, Morocco possesses
a well indented seabord of some
nine hundred miles, well placed to
menace one of the most frequented
parts of the Atlantic, and com-
manding the Western Mediter-
ranean, just as England commands
the Straits of Dover and the Chan-
nel. Nay, her geographical posi-
tion meni equals that of Great
Britain herself; in one sense per-
haps she is superior; for if this
island is better situated as regards
a readier communication with the
North Sea and the Baltic, Morocco
not only communicates with, but do-
minates over the Mediterranean.
With the actual improvements in
steam navigation, the possession of
even a part of the Atlantic coast of
Morocco by a maritime Power,
would be a counterpoise to the
British station in the Tagus. It
might also form a starting point
from which the naval force of an
active and ambitious people could
readily beset the great Atlantic
highway from Europe to the Indies,
America, the Pacific, and Australia.
For though the mouths of the
rivers of Morocco have become
sand-barred, the Bay of Agadeer
(in north latitude 30° 30’, and west
longitude 9° 38’) is a safe roadstead
for large vessels; while if the spa-
cious harbour of El Waladia (in
north latitude 32° 42’ and west lon-
gitude 9° o') were improved, it
would be one of the finest ports in
the world, sufficiently extensive to
contain five hundred sail of the
line.- From these haunts of the
old Sallee rovers, but with far
greater power, the steam cruisers of
a dashing race might pounce upon
the argosies of the world, laden
with the produce of the new gold
fields, as well as the varied pro-
ducts of regular industry. Should
the principle which the Great

Political Importance of Morocco.

721

Eastern was constructed to illus-
trate be successfully established, and
steam-vessels be enabled to carry
their own coals as well as passen-
gers and cargo, Morocco would pro-
bably rival Egypt in that which
alone gives Egypt such importance,
since the West of Europe and
North America have so far out-
grown the Mediterranean States in
activity, industry, and wealth—
namely, the communication with
India. Forexceptincases of urgency,
the greater length of the voyage by
the Cape would probably counter-
balance the inconveniences of the
break at Alexander and Suez, and
the extreme heats of the Red Sea,
at least to passengers for Madras

and Bombay. Neither, in a specu-

lative survey of this kind, should
it be overlooked that, though some
dozen degrees of latitude intervene
between Cape Non, the southern
boundary of Morocco, and the
French settlements on the Senegal,
yet in a political sense there is no
interruption; for only the Great
Sahara, uninhabited and uninha-
bitable save by wandering tribes,
interposes between the two fron-
tiers. The same characteristic,
though in a greater degree, is visible
on the Mediterranean. The boun-
dary between Morocco and the
French territory of Algiers is only
a river, so that the possession of
even the northern shore of Morocco
would give to France one-half of
Africa, that is habitable, between the
Atlantic and Egypt. And it is need-
less to say that such a possession
would greatly aid in effecting what
we hear so much about, ‘the con-
version of the Mediterranean into a
French lake.’

All this, however, is what our
neighbours would call an ‘idea.’
The command which Morocco holds
over the entrance to the Mediter-
ranean, and the places which Spain
tengo along the northern coast,
lave a practical bearing on English
interests, which the diplomatic as-
surance of the Spanish minister does
not tend to secure. Opposite the
garrison of Gibraltar lies the Spa-
nish Presidio of Ceuta, which is
considered, like the English fortress,
impregnable by land. About two
hundred miles to the eastward, and
near to the Algerine frontier, is

Some Account of Morocco.

Melilah, another (penal) possession
of Spain, described by Admiral
Smyth in his memoir on The Medi-
terranean as ‘a Moor-bound space.
with barely a pistol-shot range of
territory.’ According to Durrieu,
who says he lived for three months
at Ceuta, that fortress is apparently
little better off than the Moor-bound
Melilah, as part of his account of
Ceuta may show :—

On the one side of the fosse you see,
seated gravely, with his legs crossed
under a wild palm-tree, one of the
guards of the Sultan of Morocco. With
his great arquebuss suspended to the
tree, he smokes his pipe, and looks
fixedly and gloomily at the soldier of the
Provincial of Valentia or Seville, who
on his side, huddled into his sentry-box,
and leaning on his carbine, throws a
distrustful glance across the ditch at his
neighbour.

At every fifty paces you meet thus
Europe and Morocco face to face, silently
gazing at each other, in the persons of
their sentinels.

* * * *

If the silence that reigns along the
line is ever disturbed, it is by the report
of a gun suddenly heard from the
Moorish side. The Mussulman soldier,
without troubling himself to get up,
has shot a bull on the Spanish territory,
which hunger had tempted to trespass
within sight of the fat pastures usurped
by the Moors fifteen years ago.

Whether the governor of Ceuta put
up with the affront, or complain to the
Pacha of Tetuan, makes very little dif-
ference. There is no instance on record
of any amends being made for such an
outrage.—(The Present State of Morocco.
By Xavier Durrieu.)

To complete the note of the Spa-
nish possessions on the Mediter-
ranean: between Ceuta and Melilah
are a rock (Sexinsula) on which the
Spaniards possess a petty post, and
the fortress of Pefion de Velez,
that Admiral Smyth mentions as
‘an elevated islet, surrounded by
strong works; which being nearly
inaccessible, is therefore held to be
impregnable.’

Of so little importance were these
four places under Old Spain, that few
persons even knew of their existence
—unless it was Ceuta, whose posi-
tion might attract the attention of
Mediterranean tourists. Under
Young Spain and its rising ambition
they would be of no great conse-
quence as matters stood, but they

[December,

may rise to importance with an ex-
tended territory round them. Ac-
cording to Senor Collantes, writing
on the 21at October, ‘ it will be diffi-
cult for the Government of Spain to
determine even approximately the
nature of the guarantees they may
find themselves underthe necessity of
asking,’ from Morocco ; while he re-
serves the right of demanding any-
thing that can be got, for so we in-
terpret ‘according as it may suit
their (the Spanish) interests.’ These
four possessions may therefore be-
come a nucleus of great moment,
not simply as regards England, but
every nation that has transactions
in the Mediterranean, If a large
extension of the territory round the
four fortresses were obtained (and
something like this as regards Ceuta
popeees to have been demanded
before the war); still more if the
slip of coast between Ceuta (or
Tangier) and Peiion de Velez (from
sixty to seventy miles) be ceded
by Morocco to Spain, the entrance
to the Mediterranean would be
dominated in time of war, and
Spain would obtain troublesome
rights in time of peace. If the
reader turns to any map of Europe
or Africa, he will see that the oppo-
site coasts of Spain and Morocco
would (if the Straits of Gibraltar
were closed) form a not very wide
bay, both coasts being held by
Spain. In this case the passage of
the Straits would be considerably
narrowed, for Spain, holding both
coasts, could compel ships, if she so
pleased, to run the gauntlet through
a series of obstacles for some seventy
miles, if she went to the expense
of creating them, and providing
armed steamers. This, as we say,
concerns all maritime peoples. The
peculiar interest of this country,
though of a narrower kind, is still
worth consideration. It is from the

rt of Tangier that Gibraltar is
ed, and from Tangier and Tetuan
that our fleets can be watered and
revictualled in case of need. At
Tetuan, in 1799, ‘a fleet of seven-
teen sail of the line watered
without any loss of time, and
took in stock and fresh pro-
visions.” (Smyth’s Mediterranean,
p- 98). It was Nelson’s opinion
that should Great Britain be at war
with any European maritime State,

1859.]

Morocco must be friendly to us, or
else we must obtain possession of
Tangier. The inconvenience and,
under certain contingencies, the
danger to this country, if Spain ob-
tained the nautically advantageous
points along the northern coast, or
even if she obtained a preponderat-
ing power over the coast and people
of Morocco, are obvious. It is true
that Spain by herself is no very
dangerous antagonist either by sea
or land, to a power that stopped
short of penetrating any distance
into her territory. But since the
time of Louis XIV., Spain has
generally been in warlike alliance
with France, and French influence
is now rather likely to increase than
diminish. If France should ever
obtain the slice of land between
Pefion de Velez and Algeria, the
political consequences would be still
more serious.

But independent of its position,
the country of Morocco is of great
value in itself. Every authority,
from Lempriere (1789-90) to Smyth
(1850), unites in praises of the
climate, soil, and natural capa-
bilities. Though nearer the tropics
than any European territory, the
sea breezes from its long lines of
coast continually temper the air, and
the range of the Atlas Mountains,
that run in a sort of parallel with
the sea, shut out the fiery winds of
the Desert. Towards the south the
weather is very hot, but throughout
a part of this region, especially in
the vicinity of the city of Morocco,
the Atlas rises into the region
of perpetual snow, and cools the
air. ‘The climate of Morocco is at
once mild and salubrious,’ says
Smyth; Jackson terms it ‘healthy
and invigorating ;’ Lempriere, a
medical officer stationed at Gibral-
tar, and not disposed to look at
anything favourably, as he felt
himself ungratefully treated by his
princely patient, who had expressly
sent for him, and ill-used i the

ew father, the Emperor Sidi
Mahomet, speaks of it in even higher

terms. Along the Atlantic seabord,
and occasionally in the interior,
rocky or sandy districts may be
met, but the greater portion of the
plains are exuberantly fertile; the
mountain valleys are equally pro-
ductive, though of course with dif-
VOL, LX. NO. CCCLX.

Natural Riches of Morocco.

723

ferent vegetations, the varying site
and elevation of the country giving,
as may be supposed, great variety
to the productions, from the date in
the furthest south, to the fruits and
cereals of temperate climates in the
valleys of the Atlas, or the higher
land of the north. The summary
of Lempriere, however, presents
such a complete coup-d’wil of cli-
mate, soil, and vegetable produc-
tions, that it would be better to
quote his words than attempt an
inferior picture :

Within such latitudes, the climate, as
might be expected, is comparatively
mild in temperature ; and as the coun-
try, in a great measure, is free from
those marshy districts, which, in warm
climates, not unfrequently engender the
most fatal diseases; and as the plains
are well ventilated and tempered by the
approximation of lofty mountains; the
country proves uniformly healthy to the
inhabitants, and most highly beneficial
to those Europeans who, from previous
indisposition, have resorted thither for a
change of air.

In the northern provinces, the cli-
mate is nearly the same as that of Spain,
with the autumnal and vernal rains
peculiar to that country, but towards
the south, the rains are less general and
certain, and of course the heat is more
excessive,

7 * * *

We may however generally observe,
that throughout the whole of the em-
peror’s dominions, the air, with excep-
tions as to certain periods of the year,
and the occasional influence of par-
ticular winds, has a congenial softness,
and a degree of serenity, which render
the climate peculiarly delightful. The
seaport towns have the additional ad-
vantage of being frequently refreshed
with sea-breezes ; and Mogodore, though
so far to the southward, from being
subject in the summer season to have
the wind regularly at north-west, is
quite as cool as the more temperate
climates of Europe.

The soil of the empire of Morocco,
though varying in its nature and quality,
according to the province in which it is
to be found, yet generally, is in the
highest degree fertile, and under proper
cultivation, is capable of producing all
the luxuries of the eastern and western
worlds. It must however be confessed,
that on some parts of the seacoast, like
every other country under similar cir-
cumstances, it is sandy and barren ;
but the plains of the interior uniformly
consist of a rich black loam, which
renders them fertile beyond all calcula-

3B

724

tion. The mountainous parts also, by
suitable cultivation, no doubt might be
rendered capable of producing most of
those fruits and plants which succeed
best in the hilly countries of warm cli-
mates ; and I see no reason why plan-
tations of coffee, cocoa, pimento, and
those of most of the tropical productions,
might not be brought to perfection in
the southern provinces, as well as of
sugar, cotton, rice, and indigo, the
cultivation of which has already
been successfully introduced into the
country.

From the slight cultivation the ground
at present receives, which is merely the
burning the stubble before the autumnal
rains come on, (for manure is not re-
quired,) and the ploughing it about six
inches deep, it produces, at a very
early season, and in most luxuriant
abundance, excellent wheat and barley
(though no oats), Indian corn, alderoy,
beans, pease, hemp, flax, and a
great variety of esculent vegetables.
Among the fruits may be mentioned,
oranges of a very superior quality,
lemons, citrons, pomegranates, melons,
water-melons, olives, figs, grapes,
almonds, dates, peaches, apricots, apples,
pears, cherries, plums, and, in short, all
the fruits to be found in the southern
provinces of Spain and Portugal, with
many others peculiar to the country
itself. To these productions may be
added a variety of plants, capable of
being applied to the most useful pur-
poses, both in medicine and the arts, and
probably a great many others which
have not been noticed, or the uses of
which have not been ascertained. As
little encouragement, however, is given
to emulation, or industrious exertion,
many of the productions of the country
do not arrive at the full perfection of
which they seem capable. Could, indeed,
®% proper spirit for agriculture and
foreign commerce be intreduced, or, in
other words, could the sovereign be per-
suaded, that by suffering his subjects to
be enriched, he would improve his own
treasury, this empire, from its convenient
situation with respect to Europe, and

Some Account of Morocco.

[ December,

from the natural luxuriance and fertility
of its soil, might, as we have more than
once stated, become of the highest poli-
tical and commercial importance.—(A
Tour through the Dominions of the
Emperor of Morocco. By William
Lempriere, M.D., Physician to the
Forces. Third Edition. London. 1813.
—p. 361-365.)

Animal life is as remarkable in
Morocco as the vegetable produc-
tions. The sheep are of several
species, including the large flat-
tailed kind, which some consider a
delicacy, and mountain breeds which
surpass the Southdown. The oxen
are very fine, and the mules, in the
opinion of some, superior to those
of Spain, as being more docile and
more capable of sustaining fatigue.
The far- famed Moorish barb has de-
generated, not from natural causes,
but through the tyranny of the
Government. The Emperor or his
myrmidons seizing any remarkable
animal, the people became careless
in breeding. The camel, though to
be met with everywhere as a beast of
burden, wheel carriages being un-
known, has its more natural home in
thesouth. Wheretheempire borders
on the Sahara, there is said to be a
kind called El Heirie, or the desert
camel, of whose speed stories are told
approaching to the fabulous.

Several of the rivers are, in the
late Mr. O’Connell’s words, ‘ full of
fish,’ and in the Atlantic Ocean they
are teeming. The fleeting orna-
ments of nature, flowers, are pro-
duced in abundance, from the rose,
the violet, and the jasmine of tem-
perate climes, to those more peculiar
to the south. In fact, ems
picture of the former kingdom and
now province of Fez, is scarcely
exaggerated, and in its vivid touches
and broad contrasts may apply to a
large portion of the empire :—

Her mother was a Moorish maid, from Fez,
Where all is Eden or a wilderness,

There the large olive rains its amber store
In marble fonts ; there grain, and flower, and fruit,
Gush from the earth until the land runs o’er ;
But there, too, many a poison tree has root,
And midnight listens to the lion’s roar ;
And long, long deserts scorch the camel’s foot,
Or heaving, whelm the helpless caravan.

The exceptions to this glowing
picture are the ‘long, long deserts,’
which are not found on the western

side of Atlas till the boundary of

Morocco is passed, while the bury-
ing of caravans in sand raised by
a storm is held by us moderns to be
a fable. To drop from poetry to

1859.]

matter of fact, one drawback to the
country is, that it possesses no use-
ful timber, apparently owing to the
frequent wars among aspirants for
the crown, the vanquished taking
refuge in woods, whence the
victors drive them by setting their
covert on fire. The great infliction
of Morocco, however, is occasional
visits of locusts, which devastate
the country, and leave famine and
pestilence behind. In 1779, 1800,
a fatal plague followed the locust
visitation, and almost depopulated
the country.

Admiral Smyth describes the
surface of Morocco as ‘equal to that
of Spain,’ including the division of
Tafilet, which lies to the east of the
Atlas range, and runs into the Great
Sahara. The extreme point of the
Empire on the north is Ceuta,
in latitude 35° 51’, and towards the
south Cape Non, or Noun, in lati-
tude 28° 33’. This last headland or
promontory is also the extreme
point of the Empire towards the
west. Its eastern limit may be
loosely marked by a line drawn
irregularly towards the south, from
the mouth of the river Muliwi, in
about 23 degrees of west longitude,
to the Atlas range ; the boundaries
south of the Atlas are very arbi-
trary, the desert furnishing no well
defined landmarks. The true geo-
graphical division would be Morocco
within and beyond the Atlas, but
the actual division is_ historical.
Like most kingdoms that have arisen
since the downfall of the Roman
Empire, Morocco originally con-
sisted of several oe
which the emperors wanted power
or policy to thoroughly consolidate.
The divisions, therefore, follow those
of the original kingdoms, and con-
sist of—

1. The Northern Division. This
division was the ancient kingdom of
Fez; it is the largest, and perhaps
on the whole the most important, of
the four divisions. It 1s washed
throughout its entire extent both by
the Mediterranean and the Atlantic,
and on its shores are situated the
best known ports or roadsteads, as
Tetuan, Tangier, Al Haratch, or
Larache, and the former ‘name of
fear,’ Salée. The two first of these

are dangerous in certain winds, and
the others are now of small account,

Ladies of Mequinez.

owing to the sand-bars, though
Smyth is of opinion that they ‘ may
some day be converted into good
stations for steamers.’ But the
northern division of the Empire is
deficient in not having roadsteads
improveable into thoroughly secure
harbours. The southern boundary
of this division is the river Morbeya,
which falls into the Atlantic at Aza-
moor. The inland towns are com-
——— numerous, the principal
eing Fez, so celebrated as a centre
of learning during the middle ages,
and the capital of the kingdom
named after it. Another important
city is Mequinez, distinguished for
its site, its beauty, and fertility, the
hospitality of its men, and the
charms of its women. Jackson says,
‘ The inhabitants are extremely hos-
pitable; they invite strangers totheir
gardens, and entertain them sump-
tuously ; indeed, the manners of the
people in this part of the Empire are
more mild perhaps than any other.’
Warmed by his theme, and perhaps
by his agreeable and extensive ex-
periences, he continues, ‘ Nature
seems to have favoured the women
of Mequinas, for they are handsome
without exception, and to a fair com-
plexion, with expressive black eyes
and dark hair, they unite a suavity
of manners rarely to be met with
even in the most polished nations
of Europe.’ The Spanish towns and
fortresses already mentioned are
situated on the northern or Medi-
terranean coast of this division.
Along the Mediterranean, too, in-
habit the Riff tribés, whose practices
are one ground of the Spanish war.
2. The Central Divisionis bounded
on the north by the Morbeya river;
on the west by *he Atlantic; on the
east by the highest mountains of
the Atlas range’; and on the south
by an offshoot which stretches from
the main chain to the ocean, and is
called by some geographers the
Western Atlas. Although this
division is not so extensive, or of so
commanding a position as the first,
it is still important from its natural
advantages and the effects of accu-
mulated labour as well as historical
renown. The city of Morocco is
situated in this division, as well as
Mogodore the chief modern com-
mercial port, and El Waladia, al-
ready alluded to as capable of being
3B2

726

made ‘ one of the finest ports in the
world.’

3. The Third or Southern Division,
geographically speaking, consists of
only the province of Suse or Sous,
subdivided into two districts—Sous-
al-Adna and Sous-al-Aska. Its
boundaries are the Western Atlas
on the north, the Atlantic on the
west, the River Akassa on the south,
and a sweep of the Hachar or
Southern Atlas, which last also
divides it from the province of
Draha. This province, in the formal
arrangement, is classed with Suse,
though in situation Draha rather
belongs to Tafilet.

The Bay of Agadeer, the largest
and best natural port or sheltered
roadstead of the Empire, is situated
in this division. The province of
Suse, according to Jackson, ‘is the
most extensive, and, excepting grain,
the richest province of the Empire.
The olive, the almond, the date, the
orange, the grape, and all the other
fruits produced in the northern
provinces, abound here. * *
>. @¢. & © The grapes of
Edautenan are exquisitely rich (but
the Jews, who are the wine-makers
of Morocco, cannot produce a good
article). Indigo grows wild in all
the lowlands, and is of a vivid blue.’
In summer, however, the heat in all
these lowlands is great, and the

icture of Fez already quoted from
oon is, in the darker features,
more applicable to Suse, except
‘the long, long deserts,’ on which
the province only borders. The
whole of Suse admits the sovereignty
of the Emperor of Morocco; but
under a weak monarch, or with one
who is involved in civil contests for
his throne, the warlike tribes of
Arabs and Shelluhs assume‘a prac-
tical independence, obeying and
paying as they please.

4. The Fourth or Eastern Division
was formerly the kingdom of Tafilet.
It lies beyond the Atlas, like the
province of Draha, from which it is
only separated by a river, and with
which it would naturally be joined.
The caravan road from Fez to Tim-
buctoo runs through the city of
Tafilet by a pass in the Atlas
Mountains; but beyond this there
is no necessary connexion between
the Atlantic and Mediterranean
provinces of the Empire and the

Some Account of Morocco.

[December,

half-desert lands of Tafilet and
Draha. On the banks of some
rivers which rise in the Atlas
Mountains to lose themselves in
the sands of the Desert, or to form a
lake, there are plantations of Indian
corn, rice, and indigo, with occa-
sionally wheat and barley; but the
staple produce of the country is
dates. Water is tolerably plentiful,
but brackish, that of one of the
rivers being undrinkable, and the
largest river that passes by Tafilet
being saline. The heat is almost
insufferable, the country being ex-
osed to the hot winds of the
ahara, and in most parts being
devoid of shade or shelter. ‘A
pe who imagines a vast plain,
ounded by an even horizon, similar
to the sea out of sight of land, will
have an accurate idea of this coun-
try.’ Its relation to Morocco is
historical. The Shereef, or de-
scendant of Mahomet, who con-
quered the maritime provinces and
compressed them into one kingdom,
and whose descendants still occupy
the throne, was a native of Tafilet.
The natural obstacles which the
geographical features of the empire
west of the Atlas offer to an in-
vader are perhaps more trouble-
some than insuperable, unless they
were backed by a sufficient and dis-
ciplined force. The Muliwi, which,
as before remarked, separates
Algiers from Morocco, is difficult in
the winter, and is said to be im-
ae from about the middle of
ecember to the end of January;
while the lesser Atlas range and
the mountainous country beyond it
as far as Tangier would present
great impediments. But these dif-
ficulties, as well as the daring and
activity of the Riffs, would be merely
checks. They could not resist the
science, gallantry, and pertinacious
pressure of a French army, what-
ever might be the case with a
Spanish. Even if they could, the
long line of coast is assailable
in too many points to stop an
invader, unless the Moors were his
masters at sea, which they clearly
would not be in the case of any
existing maritime power. The pos-
session of Ceuta gives to Spain a
ready access to the country. When
her army has passed the high lands
beyond Tangier, the principal

1859.]

natural difficulties will be overcome.
Rivers swollen by the winter rains
may delay the march, flooded lands,
and the spurs of mountains, may in-
terpose obstacles, butthereis nothing
to stop the course of an army short
of the Southern Atlas, or perhaps
of the Great Sahara, unless it be
the Spanish character for procras-
tination, and want of method and
power of combination. If an army
rashly entangles itself in mountains,
it may suffer considerable loss; if
mad enough to enter the true desert,
it must quickly get out, or be de-
stroyed. The great natural ene-
mies the Spaniards have to fear are
the wintry winds on a lee shore ;
for Admiral Smyth pronounces that
Charles V. was too late by three
months in his disastrous expedition
against Algiers, though he cast
anchor in the bay on the 26th of
October, 1541. But more fatal than
shipwreck would be the appear-
ance of cholera, or some other
deadly epidemic, in their army ; as
is said to have been the case with the
late French expedition; which, at
first treated lightly in the published
accounts, is now admitted to have
cut off one-fifth of the force.

From Morocco having no direct in-
fluence on the progress of the world,
and its slender connexion with Euro-
pean sympathies, a detailed history
of the Empire would have little inte-
rest for the general reader. The
numerous petty States into which
Barbary was divided on the decom-
position of the Saracen empire, and
their continuous wars and revolu-
tions, have much less attraction than
even the heptarchal combats of kites
and crows, by the difference be-
tween the present importance of
England and Barbary, and the
greater interest we all feel in our-
selves. The most curious subject
of investigation or speculation for
some centuries, would be the
greater spirit and power, if not
numbers, which the Desert and
Atlas tribes possessed then, com-
pared with their condition for many
years past. Though Morocco was
founded in 1052, just before the
Norman Conquest, it was not till the
subjugation effected by the Shereef
of Tafilet, already mentioned, that
the Empire of Morocco assumed its
present form. From that time its

History of Morocco.

annals possess greater unity than
before, and exhibit the nature of
the events and the character of the
actors with more fulness, but for
English readers they Jack, as al-
ready observed, the bond of a com-
mon sympathy. Three (or perhaps
four topics, if we include the sub-
ject of the Portuguese possessions),
would fairly admit of a fuller and
more thorough treatment than they
have received; if indeed, they can
be said to have been treated at all.
1. The state of manufactures and
learning at Fez during its palmy
days, and the influence which the
sciences taught, and the works
emanating thence, may be sup-
posed to have exercised on the
world. 2. The episode of the Sallee
rovers; which if handled at once
philosophically and popularly, might
combine in the same section his-
torical inquiry with the spirit of
romance. 3. The unlimited power
of the Emperors of Morocco would
furnish means of showing the ter-
rible effects of an unchecked des-
potism on the character of the
monarch, and the happiness of his
subjects. The Moorish sovereigns
have differed, of course, in disposi-
tion and capacity, but one stain of
cruelty and caprice runs through
them all. — (Lempriere’s Tour,
pp. 204, 205). This is the result,
even when the nature of the
man himself might have in-
clined him to virtue, and even
when he actually exhibits the germ
of virtues. The Emperor Sidi
Mahomet, who died in 1790, in his
eighty-first year, appears to have
had naturally no other vice than
avarice, and in general he gratified
this passion without cruelty, so far
as life was concerned ; but it pro-
duced mischievous economical ef-
fects on the public, and the grossest
tyranny towards private individuals.

is apparent liberality in en-
couraging foreign trade was not
to enrich the country, but only
to make money for himself. But
he defeated his purpose by his
eagerness and caprice, perpetually
varying the customs duties, and
sometimes raising them so high
that the foreign merchants had to
send their vessels home empty.
Sometimes he would encourage im-
portation, sometimes prohibit it.

728

He turned merchant himself, and
buying goods from foreign traders,
he compelled the Jews to pay him
five times their value. According
to Lempriere, who himself felt the
effeets of the Emperor's penurious-
ness in the shabbiness of his reward,
the mode of dealing with private
individuals was in this wise. ‘He
was always surrounded by people
who, for the sake of rising into
favour, were ready to give him
information concerning any of his
subjects who were rich. It was
then his usual course of proceeding
to invent some plea for confining
them in prison; and if that did not
succeed, he put them in irons,
chained them down, and proceeded
in a course of severity and cruelty,
till at last, wearied out with punish-
ments and disgraces, the unfortu-
nate victims surrendered the whole
of their possessions.’ In compelling
his governors and other officials to
disgorge, the Emperor only fol-
lowed the regular practice of Orien-
tal potentates, but Sidi Mahomet
required to be propitiated in great
gifts from his own sons. He seems
to have possessed more control over
his passions’ than his countrymen
in general, and to have shown a
regard for public decorum not
always exhibited by absolute mon-
archs. When at his regular public
audiences he felt his temper rising
beyond his government, it was his
habit to order the court to be
cleared, lest he should make an un-
seemly exhibition; and as both
courtiers and suitors understood
what that order meant, he was
obeyed in a twinkling. He could,
notwithstanding, be cruel enough
when he was offended. A Jew who
had imprudently written something
to his prejudice, was quartered alive,
cut to pieces, and his flesh after-
wards given tothe dogs. Lempriere
has an illustration of his tyranny,
which, Eastern cruelty being con-
sidered, is really not so extraor-
dinary. The cuffer of some absolute
monarchs might have fared worse.

A Moor of some consequence, and very
opulent, gave a grand entertainment on
the marriage of one of his sons. The
emperor, who happened to be in the
neighbourhood, and who well knew that
magnificence was a striking proof of
wealth, was determined to be present at

Some Account of Morocco.

[December,

the festival, in order that. he might more
fully inform himself of the circumstances
of the Moor. For this purpose he dis-
guised himself in a common dress, and
entered the house in the midst of all the
jollity, and perhaps the licentiousness,
of the entertainment. The master of
the ceremonies observing a person of
mean appearance intrude himself into
the room so abruptly, ordered him out ;
and upon the refusal of the stranger, he
gave him a kick, and pushed him by
violence out of the house. For a short
space of time after this occurrence, the
whole affair passed without notice, and
probably had escaped the memory of
most; and it was a matter of the utmost
surprise to the master of the house, to
receive an order, commanding him im-
mediately to repair to Morocco. Upon
being igtroduced to the emperor, he was
asked if he recollected the circumstances
which have just been related, to which
he replied in the affirmative. ‘Know
then,’ said the emperor, ‘I was that
Moor whom you treated thus contume-
liously; and to convince you I have not
forgot it, that foot and that hand which
insulted me shall perish.’—I have seen
this unfortunate victim of tyranny
walking about the streets without his leg
and arm.—(Lempriere’s Tour, p. 204.)

His son and immediate successor,
Muley Yazid, was suspected and
persecuted by Sidi Mahomet, who
sent an army against him, and when
that hesitated in attacking the sanc-
tuary where the Prince had taken
refuge, the descendant and repre-
sentative of the Prophet set out him-
self with more forces, in addition to
reinforcements he had already sent,
but he died on his journey north-
ward. Notwithstanding the dis-
pleasure of the old Emperor, the
open claims of another of his sons
to the crown, with an army ready
to back his pretensions, the mere
force of public opinion carried
Muley Yazid to the throne without
bloodshed, or scarcely disturbance,
through the general estimation of
his character. And this seems na-
turally to have beer of a rare kind.
He was quick in apprehension,
brave, self-determined, and politic,
with a disregard of money and a
touch of magnanimity rarely found
in an Eastern or in any monarch.
Indeed, his chief vice appears to
have been a propensity to strong
drink (perhaps inherited from his
mother, an Irish widow), which he
had either concealed or controlled

1859.]

during the life of his father. The
undue indulgence of this habit on
his accession, and the absence of
any check on his proceedings, ren-
dered him as Emperor a monster of
cruelty. In two years the people
who had carried him to the throne,
induced Muley Hasem, one of his
brothers, to declare against him.
The pusillanimity of this prince
led him to yield the command of
his army to one of his generals,
while the approach of danger
seemed to rouse the Emperor.
After an obstinate battle he de-
feated the enemy, but either from a
necessary or a reckless exposure of
his person in the action, he received
wounds which in a few days proved
mortal.

During the short period of life which
remained to him, his whole attention
was occupied in punishing the people
of Morocco for their attachment to his
brother. Between two and three thou-
sand of the inhabitants, without regard
to age or sex, were massacred in cold
blood ; while some of them he ordered
to be nailed alive to the walls, he tore
out the eyes of others with his own spurs,
and, in his dying moments, passed an
edict that sixty people of Mogodore,
among whom were most of the Euro-
pean merchants, should be decapitated,
for the assistance which he supposed
they had afforded to hisenemy. For-
tunately for them, he died soon after
issuing the order, and it was not for-
warded.—(Lempriere’s Jour, p. 445.)

It has been already intimated that
the Constitution or rather Govern-
ment of Morocco, is the most per-
fect’ autocracy that has existed, at
least since the Caliphs, and for the
same reason, the asserted descent
of the Emperor from Mahomet,
and the assumed claim to his

owers. The measures of the
Turkish Sultans may be checked
by the Divan; the Ulema, as the
head of religion, may offer some
opposition to their tyranny; a
Ministry or particular Viziers may
exercise some influence over their
masters; and in Turkey, as else-
where in the Mahometan world,
the Koran has often been beld up
asa buckler against a tyrant, and
not always without success. But
none of these means exist to check
the will of the Emperor of Morocco.
He has neither divan, nor council,
nor ministry, his highest officer be-

Autocracy of Morocco. 729

ing little more than a secretary in
theory, whatever power his abilities
may actually obtainforhim. There
is no religious body, or any inde-
pendent head of religion; the Em-
peror, representing the Prophet, is
hirfelf the chief of Church and
State, and indeed claims a supe-
riority over all potentates: he is
* Protector of the Faith, and Sultan
of Sultans. The more politic
monarchs have increased this belief
in the minds of their subjects by
practising empirical arts to attain
the character both of learned men
and saints. Even the Koran itself,
so powerful elsewhere, is of no
avail in Morocco, for the repre-
sentative of the Prophet can of
course alter or modify the book as
the particular occasion requires.
Against Amer Seedna, *‘ Our Lord’s
decree,’ there is no appeal whatever,
so that in theory there may be said
to be no law, except the will of the
Emperor. In practice, however,
the Cadi decides by the Koran, and
the Emperor doubtless rarely over-
rides it, unless in matters where he
himself is deeply interested. The
only check upon this most atrocious
principle seems the right of revolt,
to place another member of the
family upon the throne. A son
rebelling against a father, or a
brother waging war against a
brother, has at least all the family
rights and privileges, and in this
sense possesses as good a claim as
the occupant of the throne ; in the
eyes of his partisans a much better.

Under such a state of things there
can, properly speaking, be no insti-
tutions. Men, however, are all too
much the creatures of habit to fre-
quently change established modes
of ruling. In Morocco the first
and chief delegates of the central
authority are the Bashaws, one of
whom is appointed to every pro-
vince, and who possesses, or at all
events exercises, the powers of the
Emperor, except in cases of death
punishment, which the sovereign
reserves to himself. A Bashaw can
levy taxes, impose fines, plunder
whom he pleases, and exercise in his
province the same ruling power as
the monarch over the empire. Un-
less the caprice of favouritism
should interfere to promote mere
adventurers, these high posts are

730

filled by men of experience and
general capacity, or of great con-
sideration, the sons of the Emperor
being often appointed to these posts.
One common fate, more or less,
overtakes them all. As soon as they
have grown rich by extortion¥and
plunder, the Emperor plunders them
in turn. Under such a system, ap-
proach to security, even of property,
is impossible ; it is, however, a sys-
tem not peculiar to Morocco, but
extending throughout the East.

Saeneliatale elow the bashaws
are two oflicers who differ rather in
name than infunctions—1. Alkaldes
(whose name the Moors left behind
them in Spain, as the Spaniards
transferred it to their possessions in
America), and sheiks. The alkalde
is the officer of a town and district ;
the sheik of an encampment; and
encampments of Arabs and of other
tribes are numerous in Morocco.
Allowance being made for the dif-
ference arising from the habits of a
resident population and a nomade
tribe, both officers discharge the
same duties—collecting taxes, main-
taining order, and punishing de-
linquents. They combine in them-
selves both civil and military autho-
rity, though it may be doubted
whether the alkalde rightfully takes
cognizance of what we call civil
cases.

These are more properly the func-
tion of the well-known Cadi, a civil
judge found wherever the doctrines
of Mahomet prevail, and whois also
chief priest, so far as Mahometan-
ism admits of a priesthood. Unless
by usurpation of the alkalde, all
civil disputes concerning property,
debts, &c., and all sepeiolienss
not of a criminal kind, are heard
and decided by him. Both alkalde
and cadi have subordinate officers,
who uct as their deputies in their
absence. From the decision of
these judges there is an appeal to
the Emperor: but the expense, the
distance, and the uncertainty, to a
poor man who cannot propitiate the
Sultan of Sultans by presents, ren-
der such appeals rare. Nor, when
a man has been punished, say by the
bastinado, is it easy to see what an
appeal would do for him, unless the
Emperor were in a jocular mood,
and ordered it to be returned to
him. Cases of death of necessity

Some Account of Morocco.

[ December,

go to the Emperor (at least, in
theory).

It is extremely difficult to pass
any opinion upon the administration
of justice in Morocco. In the first
place, writers not only differ from
each other, but from themselves at
different times ; particular instances
and passing opinions being often
contradicted by general conclusions.
Thus Lempriere, after giving a bad
account of the administration of the
law, speaks in raptures of the police,
evidently contrasting it in his mind
with the London * Bow-street run-
ners’ and ‘old Charleys’ of eighty
years ago. Jackson, who in his
time had probably paid some
bills of costs, is mule satisfied
with the promptness, cheapness,
and substantial justice of cadi
law; and he expresses a similar satis-
faction with the Emperor’s decisions
in appeals, or original cases brought
before him from his immediate
neighbourhood. Durrieu, the latest
authority, presents a worse pic-
ture; but his opportunities of ac-
quiring full knowledge were slight,
and he seems to have written to

rovoke and justify a war against

foroceo, if not the present war.
Hay, also a man of our generation,
a possessing much more expe-
rience of the Moors than Durrieu
can even pretend to, says that capi-
tal punishments are now rare, as if
the mildness of the age had even
reached the Court of Morocco; but
the mode of execution is still bar-
barous. The popular tales generally
exhibit in the people a sense of jus-
tice, amounting to a romantic love,
but this may arise from having no
actual acquaintance with the lady.
From a story told by Hay, it seems
that the affair of Sidi Mahomet and
the rich man who cuffed him, has
been turned into a sort of popular
Haroun al Raschid tale, pointing
morals to illustrate both pride and
hospitality.

eles the navy of Morocco has
been improved lately, it is poor
enough. This is Hay’s picture of it
twenty years ago :—

Having traversed a sandy and sterile
soil for above three miles, we descended
to that part of the river where the im-
perial squadron lay in ordinary; and less
than ordinary they were, consisting in
all of a corvette, two brigs—once mer-

1859.]

chant-vessels, which had been bought of
the Christians—and a schooner, with
some few gunboats ; and all of them, I
was assured by sailors, were unfit for
sea. Anchors, sails, and ropes were
lying in a state of decay along the bank
of the river. Such was the sorry rem-
nant of the naval force of Morocco,
whose Sallee rovers used to keepin con-
stant alarm the peaceful merchantmen
of Christendom !

The military forces of Morocco
are of two kinds, the Emperor's
troops, who form the regular army,
and the militia; and this is about
all that is known of them with any
certainty.. The Emperor's troops
are, or perhaps rather were, chiefly
negroes and cavalry. They were
originally raised by Muley Ismael
from a large number of blacks whom
he imported from Guinea. They are
said to have amounted in the outset
to a hundred thousand men, but this
seems an exaggeration. By Lem-'
sg time they had dwindled

own to about thirty-six thousand
men, including some whites, two
thirds being cavalry. In a late
article in the French Moniteur de
UC Armée, quoted by the Times of the
4th November, the Moroccan army
is said to consist of twenty thousand
men, and this is probably very near
the truth, whatever may be thought
of the exactness of the subdivision
into about equal parts of infantr
and cavalry. The organization, suc
as it is, resentbles that of the civil
government. There is a commander-
in-chief, four principal bashaws, and
alkaldes who command distinct di-
visions. There are, however, three
orders of alkaldes, the lowest appa-
rently similar to our lieutenants.

As to the militia, rashness itself
would shrink from attempting par-
ticulars. In theory, no doubt every
man capable of bearing arms is
bound to serve, and toa great extent
would do so in practice, at least at
the beginning of a war. The
bashaws of the provinces would
discharge the functions of the mili-
tary bashaws of the regular army,
and the alkaldes of the districts and
the sheiks of encampments would
fulfil the office of alkaldes. What
calculation can be made of the
numbers of the militia may be con-
jectured from the estimates of the
population. These vary from nearly

Naval and Military Forces.

731

fifteen millions (14,886,600) in Jack-
son’s particular and detailed account,
drawn in part from so-called official
documents, to six millions, the esti-
mateofChenier! This last, as some
hold, is probably beyond the truth,
though regard must be paid to the
remark of Jackson on this point.
With the Arabs, he says, hospi-
tality is not only a duty and a
virtue, but a positive Jaw, which
becomes an expensive affair to a
patriarchal people. They there-
fore form their encampments or
douars in secluded places at a dis-
tance from the high roads, to avoid
the visits of travellers; soastranger
may pass through a district and
deem it depopulated, though in
reality very fairly peopled.

But be the population much or
little, there are no doubt men
enough to defend the country pos-
sessing arms, and trained to use
them in their own fashion. The
question is, what is that fashion
worth when opposed to the disci-

line and improved arms of modern
aes e. We suspect the answer
will be not much. Almost every
man indeed is a capital horseman,
skilled in the use of his weapons,
such as they are, capable in most
cases of enduring hunger, thirst, and
fatigue. They may be fiery, if not
brave, and make good irregular
troops under certain advantages of
ground; but neither army nor
militia has any discipline even of
theirown. According toLempriere,
who must have had some military
knowledge, the Emperor's soldiers
‘appear well calculated for skir-
mishing, or’ for the purpose of
harassing an enemy, but where they
were obliged to undergo a regular
attack, from their total want of dis-
cipline they would soon be routed.’
Since his day the armies of Morocco
have doubtless rather retrograded
than improved, while the European
has wonderfully advanced in the
means of destruction even within
the last decade. But,as the Spaniard
says, ‘who knows?’ Mountains
—swollen rivers—the lateness of
the season—the difficulty of getting
supplies should those of the coun-
try be removed or destroyed—the
indomitable fierceness and bigotry
of the people, inflamed by national
hatred, and above all, sickness in an

732

epidemic form—may possibly do
something for the Moors, although
*‘ Providence is always on the side of
strong battalions.’

In earlier times the ‘ foreign re-
lations’ of Morocco pretty much
resembled those of Ishmael’s de-
scendants, their hand against every
man, and every man’s hand against
theirs, when he dared to lift it, that
is to say. After Western Europe
settled down into its present form
from the confusion of the feudal
and medieval ages, and nations
grew richer and more regularly
diplomatic, it was deemed by many
States more politic to pay a
‘tribute’ to the Moors, to exempt
their national flag from plunder,
than to punish the plunderers. This
was not done without warning, for
many writers protested against the
shame; or from necessity, as Europe
was unquestionably advancing in
arms, and in that surplus wealth
which is requisite to give effect to
modern arms; whileall the Mahome-
tan States, whether of Europe, Asia,
or Africa, were stationary, if not de-
clining. But so general was this dis-
creditable practice that almost every
commercial nation adopted it; and
so inveterate is custom, that within
these twenty years two maritime
States continued to pay toll to the
Emperor of Morocco, if they do
not continue it to this day. Mr.
Hay, the son of the Consul-General
at ‘Tangier, is the authority for this
strange fact. After the description
of the Moroccan navy already quoted,
Mr. Hay continues: ‘The terror
they (the Sallee rovers) once in-
spired, would appear not yet to have
lost all its influence upon some
maritime States, although the spirit
and the power of those rovers are
utterly defunct; for two nations,
famed deservedly for their sea-kings
of the north, and possessing gallant
navies, continue, through some
curious policy, or out of veneration,
it may be, for olden custom, to pay
annually a large and disgraceful
tribute to the Moorish potentate,
as if he were still the formidable
toli-keeper of the Herculean States.’

Till the possession of Algiers by
the French brought them into such
‘relations’ with Morocco as the
invasion of her frontier and the
bombardment of her ports, the con-

Some Account of Morocco.

[ December,

nexion of France with the Empire
was rather formal and ostentatious
than of much real importance. For
very many years the closest inter-
course has been with Spain and
England—Spain from her situation
and the fortresses she possesses in
the country, England from her
commercial intercourse. The atti-
tude Morocco, even sixty or se-
venty years ago, assumed towards
Spain was so lofty, not to say im-
perial, that it was wonderful how
Spain, weak and degraded as she
was, submitted to it. But she did,
and when Imperial caprice sus-
pended commercial intercourse, and
forbade exportation, resorted to
presents and bribes to get the inter-
dict taken off. Whether from dis-
tance, the advantages of our com-
mercial intercourse, or respect for
the English character, or mere
caprice, the relations with this coun-
try were as close as with any other,
and more independent, notwith-
standing the alleged indifference,
neglect, and mismanagement of the
authorities at home. Both Jackson
and Lempriere are loud in their
complaints on this subject, and
doubtless all they say is true enough.
Butit may be questioned whether the
neglect of the Foreign-office has not
turned out for the best. At present
it is as well that our connexion with
Morocco is not, or rather has not
been closer, if it be true that Lord
John Russell has informed the
Emperor that we cannot assist him
otherwise than by words. No blame
attaches to the Ministry for this.
Any attempt to go further than
Lord John has gone would pro-
bably have sealed the fate of the
Government, and been of no
benefit to Morocco. The present
and obvious interest of this country
in that Empire being slight, and
our future interests in its inde-
pendence contingent upon circum-
stances that the many cannot be
made to feel, if they can even be
brought to see them, an embroglio
for the defence of Morocco would
not have carried the country with
it; and Lord John was quite right
not to threaten, when he could not
carry out his threats.

When we consider how many
different kingdoms and races the
Peninsula contained, it is singular

1859.]

that governments so weak as Spain
and Portugal should have amalga-
mated aborigines, Roman colonists,
Goths, and Moors so completely
into one people, and that mainly
since Ferdinand of Aragon, 1479-
1516. Differences of complexion
and manners may remain, kept up
by physical differences of country,
but the Spaniards are probably more
one than the Gauls, Franks, and
Bretons of France, and certainly
than the inhabitants of the British
Isles, where four (and if we reckon
the Channel, five) different lan-
guages are yet popularly spoken.
indeed, it is ‘only within these few
weeks that, at an import tant coroner’s
inquest held in Wales, not one man
in the district could understand
English, and perhaps something
similar might be found in the Scot-
tish Highlands.
the Emperor being rather fierce and
violent than ‘ strong;’ and the Moors
not being blessed with an inquisi-
tion, and having more religious
tolerance than the Roman Catholics,
it is not really very wonderful that
the different races which inhabit
Morocco still remain distinct. They
consist of—

1. The Berebbers, or as the word
is now spelt, Berbers. These tribes
inhabit the Atlas from the latitude
of the city of Morocco to the Medi-
terranean. They are described as a
robust, active, and warlike people.
They live generally in tents; their
usual occupation is husbandry and
rearing of bees for honey and
wax. The Riffs, however, are said
to disdain agriculture, and to subsist
upon their herds and flocks, with a
little piracy and plunder superadded.
The Berbers are a brave race,
though possessed of much cunning
and duplicity. ‘Their language is
peculiar to themselves, and has been
held to be a dialect of the ancient
Carthaginian. ‘They are considered
to be the aborigines of the country ;
though if many persons among some
of the tribes possess ‘ the old Roman
physiognomy,’ they must be a mixed
breed, Jackson in his Population
Tables, previously alluded to, sets
down ‘the tribes of the Berebbers
of North Atlas altogether’ at three
millions, a number quite incredible.
Scotland contained only 2,870,784
persons at the last census in 1851.

The government of

Tribes of Morocco.

2. The Shelluhs, or Shillahs.—
These tribes inhabit the Atlas and
its branches south of the city of
Morocco; and in their modes of
living seem akin to the Berbers, ex-
cept that the Shillahs often inhabit
walled habitations or towns. Some
writers consider them to be of the
same race as the Berbers, which
they probably are. Jackson, how-
ever, strenuously combats this
opinion on the grounds of dress and
language ; having, as regards lan-
guage, procured ‘incontestable
proofs to the contrary.’ They seem
to have had a close connexion with
the Portuguese during the time that
people had possessions on the coast,
many being reported as their de-
scendants. Jackson, in his ‘ Popu-
lation Accounts,’ does not bring
them into his summary, so that he
may include the entire inhabitants
of the Atlas range in his three mil-
lions; but that must still be too
great. Neither the Berbers nor the
Shillahs are very obedient to the
Emperor of Morocco, especially in
matters of requisition; but how far
they could be brought to act against
him, as Durrieu sugge sts, may be
a question, especially in a war
against the infidels.

3- The Moors.

4. The Arabs.

The origin of both these races is
matter of dispute. If we look only
to words, the Moors would be the
ancient Mauritanians, Mauri; but
it is clear that the Moors of Spain
were originally Saracens or Arabs.
When they were finally expelled
from Spain they joined their own
countrymen in Barbary generally,
but especially in Morocco. It seems
probable that both Moors and Arabs
formed the armies of the successors
of Mahomet that conquered Bar-
bary and Spain; the differences
which are now found between them
arising from habits, and more or
less mixture of foreign blood. The
Moors inhabit the towns, or at all
events live in walled houses. They
are consequently more liable than
the Arabs to the influence of foreign
customs, of intermarriages, of seden-
tary habits of life, and of town
occupations pursued through many
generations. Indeed, they seem to
form the only really industrial- in-
habitants of the empire, foreigners

excepted, at least as regards manu-
factures and commerce.

The Arabs, so called, for many
tribes are probably not so pure in
blood as the genuine Arabian, live
in tents, and form encampments or
douars. In Tafilet their mode of
life, from the nature of the country,
resembles more closely that of the
Arab in his native seat. In Morocco
they are often an _ agricultural
people, ‘squatting’ on unoccupied
jand, of which there is a good deal
in the western provinces, especially
after famine, pestilence, or any
other public calamity has depopu-
lated the country. When the land
they occupy is exhausted, they pass
on to another place. This facility
of removal it has been remarked
would be one source of dilliculty to
an invader; and so it would, if the
towns and villages could not fur-
nish suflicient supplies to an army,
and the system of removal or de-
struction were thoroughly carried
out; but want of system, or of
regularity—of the discipline and
organization which can not only
fight a battle, but carry on a cam-
paign—seems the great want of Mo-
rocco. ‘These Arab tribes are con-
tinually at feud with each other, and
are well exercised in desultory war-
fare. A century and a half ago Shaw
pronounced the Arabian cavalry
superior to the Turkish, when
Turkey, though declining, was able
to contend with Austria and
Eugene. But it will not be men
that will be wanted in the coming
war, 80 much as leaders, and pro-
bably arms.

There are various subdivisions
among the Berbers and Arabs that
are sometimes raised into the rank
of tribes. Occasionally, however, a
native name is merely a social sign,
not an ethnological distinction.
‘Thus Kabyle denotes a cultivator ;
no matter what his race. An Arab
of the desert cannot be much of an
agriculturist, while some of the
tribes who enecamp in Morocco are
both Arabs and Kabyles.

Besides foreigners and renegades,
there are two more distinct peoples
inhabitin§ Morocco, namely, Jews
and Negroes. The Jew is not perse-
cuted for his religious beliet, but
he is despised and oppressed on
account of his religion, the autho-

Some Account of Morocco.

[ December,

rities subjecting him to extortion
and cruelty, the faithful at large to
any and every species of indignity,
and often of injury. Still the keen-
ness, the business skill, the perse-
verance, and a somewhat larger
knowledge of the world than the
Moor possesses, render the de-
spised Jew a necessary evil when
affairs of any complexity or extent
are to be carried out; while their
suppleness often gives them, as was
the case in medieval Spain, consider-
able secret influence. Jacob Attal,
a native of Tunis, was a favourite
of Sidi Mahomet, but he illus-
trated the usual fate of favourites,
being cruelly put to death by Muley
Yazid for a supposed hostility to
that prince during his father’s life-
time.

Negroes are very numerous in
Moroeco. The alleged importation
of a hundred thousand by Muley
Ismael has been already spoken of,
but ever since the conquest of the
country by the Mahometans, if not
earlier, there has doubtless been a
large and regular trade in slaves.
There is, however, no prejudice
against colour among the Moors ;
while, as among Mahometans in
general, the negroes are treated
with humanity, considered as ser-
vants indeed, rather than slaves,
and frequently manumitted. It is
probably from concubinage among
the middle and lower classes, and
from the harems of the rich, that the
difference between the Moors and
the Arabs mainly arises.

One of the most difficult things
in the world appears to be to form
a correct judgment of the character
ofa people. What different opinions
were promulgated regarding the
Turks during the late Crimean war.
According to some the whole nation
was stolid, slothful, spiritless,
bigoted, cruel, and unnatural. In
the estimation of others, and with
better opportunities of judging, the
vices of the Turks were such as a
corrupt and incapable government
would naturally produce. Removed
from its influence and the con-

tamination of large towns, the
Turk, in their estimation, was

honest, kindly, and hospitable, with
a touch of simple and patriarchal
dignity about the effendi or gentle-
man. So it is with the Moors.

1859.]

Most writers describe them as bi-
goted, ferocious, cruel, treacherous,
and licentious; insolent when treated
with civility; servile if you domi-
neer. At the same time these
writers will adduce incidents or
tell stories which shall illustrate
Moorish hospitality, or family duties
affectionately fulfilled, or a sense
and love of justice, or even traits of
compassion. The truth seems to
be, that great distinctions should be

drawn between the mass and in-,

dividual, and between each in a state
of quiet or of excitement. As a
people, the Moors are probably
arrogant and contemptuous towards
foreigners; but these qualities might
have been paralleled in Europe,
nay, perhaps in Britain, some fifty
years ago, if not now. Neither
Spaniard, Italian, Frenchman, nor
Englishman is in his heart of
hearts truly cosmopolitan. A
Moorish rabble, stimulated by re-
ligious bigotry, is unquestionably a
fearful body; but it may be doubted
whether a Spanish mob would be
one whit better under the cireum-
stances. It we look to what
Frenchmen are when under political
excitement, as exemplified in the
first Revolution, the same doubt may
be entertained of the French. It
might be said that the Moors, if not
more cruel, are more torturous in
their cruelty. It may also be said
that the Moors have received no
light or softening influence from
modern improvements, but are as
they were in those days when Spain
burnt heretics by scores at an
auto-da-fée, and France suspended
her victims to opinion over slow fires,
and, much later, broke criminals
upon the wheel, the court and ladies
of fashion looking on approvingly in
all these cases. ‘The bigotry of the
Moors seems rather a passion than
a principle, though they pride
themselves upon the purity of their
Mahometanism compared with other
Mussulmans. Jackson says that
‘the toleration of the Western Arabs
and Moors is such, that the Em-
peror (although religiously disposed
himself) will allow, on proper ap-
plication being made, any sect which
does not acknowledge a plurality of
gods, to appropriate a place to pub-
lie worship; and even the more
ignorant and bigoted Mohammedans

Moorish Character.

735

maintain that every man should be
allowed to worship God according
to his own conscience, or agreeably
to the religion of his ancestors.’
The same authority tells us, that
‘the state of domestic comfort en-
joyed by Christians established in
Morocco is far from being impeded
by those degrading distinctions
——- in Egypt and other Mo-
1ammedan countries where they
are not allowed to ride on horses
(the Prophet’s beasts), to wear green
(the Prophet's colour), &c. &c. Here
they may do either.’ And it should
be observed, that Jackson is about
the highest authority we have. He
resided in different parts of Morocco
for sixteen years, and travelled
through the country; he was well
acquainted with the language ;
and his position of merchant and
vice-consul brought him into con-
tact both with high and low, and on
social as well as business occasions.
And the usual effects of knowledge
are illustrated in his case: he speaks
better of the people than most other
writers, and exhibits more tolerance
towards them.

At the same time the general
judgment is usually right, and there
are certain leading characteristics
popularly attributed to the Moor
which seem tobe correct. ‘They are
fickle, as we learn from Jago, ‘ These
Moors are changeable in their wills.’
Like all Orientals, they are cruel
and licentious either from nature or
example; they are also deceitful
and treacherous, which qualities a
tyrannical government may force
upon them; and they have enough
of negro, or at least of African,
blood in their veins to be presuming,
if not insolent, where they dare. —

The taxation of Morocco is some-
times spoken of as if it were merely
arbitrary, except the land revenue.
This is scarcely the fact. A por-
tion of it undoubtedly arises from
voluntary gifts, that must be given,
as is the case now throughout the
vast, and was the case throughout
Europe in the dark, if not the
middle ages. But a large portion of
the revenue of Morocco is drawn
from regular sources, however irre-
gularly and tyrannically it may be
levied.

1. There is a land-tax, grounded
on the Oriental notion that ‘pro-

736

perty in the soil centres in the sove-
reign (an idea which is acted upon
as regards unappropriated lands,
not only in England, but in Ame-
rica). The Oriental theory is rather
vent than tax. The practice, at all
events in Morocco, is of the nature
of tithe. It is a levy of one-tenth
(ten per cent.) on the produce of
land, and one-fiftieth (two per
cent.) on animals, as camels, horses,
cattle, sheep, &c. It may be paid
either in money or in kind.

2. There is a duty on fish, but
heavier. Itis usually farmed; and
the farmer pays, according to Jack-
son, about twenty per cent. on the
value of the fish caught ; but what
the fisherman pays to the farmer is,
we suppose, a matter between them-
selves.

3. Customs duties, both on impor-
tation and exportation. These vary
with the caprice of the reigning
Emperor (who sometimes prohibits
exportation altogether, unless to
Gibraltar), just as customs duties
vary in Europe as circumstances
or opinions change.

4. The hereditary tax. The Em-
peror is heir to all his subjects who
die without heirs; and on occa-
sions, as in the case of the plague
of 1799-1800, this tax produces
large sums.

5- A poll tax, levied on the Jews.
This is a species of income-tax
raised by themselves, and may
amount to about ten per cent. on
their income.

6. A gate duty, not so minute as

the French octroi, but of similar
nature. Itis an impost, varying in

amount, on every camel-load of
merchandize entering into or pass-
ing out of a town.
7. Fines. These are levied on
offenders, especially for disturbing
the peace, or on dovars or encamp-
ments when a robbery occurs in
their district, which the law holds
they ought to have prevented. Both
of these are analogous to old Euro-
pean practice, the latter having a
strong resemblance to an Anglo-
Saxon law that made the district
responsible.

8. Some of these taxes may be
impolitic, and all may be levied ar-
bitrarily or corruptly. Still they
are regular in theory. Another
great source of revenue may be con-

Some Account of Morocco.

December,

siderable in amount, but is ex-
tremely irregular in its nature.
Substantially it consists of presents.
Every man who approaches the
Emperor, must approach him witha
present. Access to the ministerial
servants, or to influential courtiers,
is obtained in the same mode. The
bashaws must be propitiated by a
gift, so must the alkalde and infe-
rior officers ; even the cadi’s atten-
tion is called to the case by a pre-
sent. In what proportion the Em-
peror shares with his subordinate
officers may be difficult to say ; but
either immediately or eventually he
gets the lion’s share. It is easy to
imagine the abuses to which this
custom may give rise, and difficult
to suppose that it does not produce
deep corruption. At the same time,
it should be remembered that two
centuries ago the practice was com-
mon throughout Europe,andisnotyet
extinct on the Continent. Jackson
seemed to consider it so established
a custom, that little evil flowed
from it, because every one followed
it; nay, that it had a certain kind
of advantage. ‘The ministers and
other persons in authority do not
conceal their operations, but will
tell you what you are to pay for
such a privilege or favour, which
has at least this good effect, that
you have a certain quid pro quo, and
are not seduced under false pro-
mises to attend on ministers in-
effectually ; your business is expe-
dited generally to your satisfac-
tion.’

What the total of all these sources
of revenue may amount to, is really
unknown. Some writers seem to
have gone upon the principle of
turning ducats or some Moroccan
coin into pounds sterling. The last
and probably the most correct, is
contained in the Moniteur del’ Armée,
quoted by the Times. The piastre
is rated at about five francs, or say
four shillings.

Piastres.
2,600,000
» 900,000

CN a ed Sew
Expenditure ..

Surplus in piastres . 1,500,000

As Morocco is about the only
State that always contrives to have
a surplus revenue, the Emperor's
treasury is reported to be won-
drously full. Here again, however,

1859.]

the reports differ, and there is the
same difficulty in approaching cer-
tainty as in other statistical matter.
The amount has been rated as high
as eleven millions (sterling), an im-
probable sum; but the golden hope
of ‘ looting the Treasury’ may have
been one reason for the warlike per-
tinacity of Spain.

The foreign commerce of Morocco
is chiefly in raw materials, such as
grain, fruits, and gums, as well as
live stock and provisions to Gibral-
tar, and canal: if not so much of
late, to Spain and Portugal. The
celebrated morocco leather is in
some degree a manufacture; for
though we think the quality of the
skin is an essential point, yet
a good deal undoubtedly depends
upon the dye. It is also reported
that there are mines both of the
precious and useful metals in the
impire, but ‘ this requires confirma-
tion.’ That the foreign trade could
be wonderfully extended under a
better and more regular govern-
ment, where the duties were certain,
the trader secure, and the people
encouraged to industry by leaving
them free to follow its natural
promptings and enjoy its profits,
does not admit of doubt. The
Moors have a few manufactures, the
remains of former industry, of which
the only articles applicable to a
foreign trade with Europe are a
species of carpet somewhat inferior
to Turkish, but cheaper; a beauti-
ful kind of matting, made of the
palmetto, or wild palm-tree; and
some silk goods. With the other
Barbary States they carry on a trade
in haiks, a kind of cross between the
Scotch plaid and the Roman toga;
and the well-known cap, called from
the city where it is manufactured,
Fez. This city, too, produces pot-
tery, slippers, cchedinar, &e., and
is, with Tafilet, the chief seat of the
leather manufactory. The Arabs
make a species of black hair-cloth
from camels’ hair, which is imper-
vious to rain, and of which they
form their tents. Still, under the
best system and for years to come,
the most natural exportation of
Morocco must be articles of the
nature of raw materials rather than
of manufactured goods. The same
obscurity hangs over the extent of
the commerce of Morocco as over

Commerce and Currency.

everything else dependent on sta-
tistics and accurate accounts. Dur-
rieu says that ‘the maritime com-
merce of Morocco may be estimated
at about two millions of pounds
sterling; of this about two-thirds
are carried on by England through
Gibraltar, and the remaining third
is divided unequally among the other
Christian Powers, and the two re-
gencies of Tunis and Tripoli.’ The
nearest official return we have to the
time when Durrieu’s Present State
of Morocco was published (London,
1854), is an ‘ Account of the Exports
from the United Kingdom to all
Countries in the Year 1852.’ These
exports are given to
Gibraltar .

. £510,889
Morocco.

110,126

Total . - £621,015
which total only reaches about one-
half of the amount represented
by Durrieu, even if everything
shipped to Gibraltar was afterwards
sent to Morocco. This, however, is
obviously impossible, especially as
the Spaniards accuse Gibraltar of
being the great smuggling depdét
whence English goods are poured
into Spain. The ‘return’ to Morocco
doubtless is the nearest the truth,
regard being had to the difference
between Custom-house values, cost
prices in England, and selling prices
in Morocco.

When there is so much difficulty
in matters of trade and general
statistics, it is not likely that pre-
cision would be found in so knotty
a subject as currency ; nor is there.
The unit of the money of account
is the mitkal (called by Europeans
the ducat), which, according to
Waterston’s Manual of Commerce,
contains 10 ounces, 40 blankeels, or
960 fluces. Thus far all is plain
sailing, though some of these are
imaginary coins; the discrepancy
begins when we try to ascertain
their value in English money. Lem-

riere rates the ounce at about 5d.
English, which would raise the
mitkal to some 4s.; Jackson gives
it at 3s. 8d.; Hay in one place at
2s. 6d., in another it will amount
to nearly 2s. 8d.; while Water-
ston makes it 3s. 1d. Durrieu
writes thus: ‘The bandqui of gold
is worth two Spanish duros, or
eight shillings. The silver bandqui

Some Account of Morocco.

thirteen reals, or about one and
eightpence (a strange discrepancy
as to the respective values of gold
and silver), and something less than
a farthing. The copper flous (fluce)
four maravedis, or two-thirds of a
halfpenny.’ These wouid seem to be
actual currency; and no doubt all
common Spanish coins pass current
in the ports and large towns. For
practical purposes, Hay’s estimate
of the mitkal, 2s. 6d. to 2s. 8d., is
probably the best.

All authorities agree that Morocco
has declined, and that every thing
is going, or more properly has gone,
toruin. Nor does there appear, we
moust frankly say, much prospect of
native renovation; for in addition
to the narrow sectarianism of spirit
thatseemsto prevent Mahometanism
from self-reinvigoration, Morocco
has causes peculiar to itself in the
claims of its Emperor, and the op-
posite character of its races, which
furnish slender hopes of internal
reform. The only chance is the
advent of some great Sultan, who
should establish a sense of security
in his people, refrain from the in-
cessant meddling with foreign com-
merce, which has been the bane of
maritime trade, and allow the people
to develop the riches of their coun-
try. Sucha monarch, however, is a
very unlikely accident.

But as the mismanagement of an
estate does not entitle another per-
son to seize it. so we know not that
the ‘ comity of nations’ entitles one
nation rightly to seize the country

[ December,

of another because that country is
not made the best of, though the
serge may have been acted upon.
But were public justice otherwis®, it
is by no means clear that the French
or Spaniards would make the coun-
try any better or richer than do the
Moroccans themselves. The past
history and present state of the
French and Spanish colonial pos-
sessions do not warrant any such
conclusion. Neither does Algeria ;
for that region was kept in a chronic
state of warfare during the earlier
part of the Gallic occupation, and
since incessant war has ceased by
the submission or destruction of the
native tribes, the colony has done
little to advance the commerce or
wealth of its parent State or of any
other country. The return which
gives the exports of Great Britain
to Morocco as £110,000, shows for
Algeria the munificent sum of
£6000! But there are more im-
portant questions connected with
national life than imports and ex-
ports and markets. These things
indeed are of great importance in
their way. They furnish means of
living in comfort or luxury, as may
be. They iudicate the nature of
the government and the dispositions
of the people. Brought to this test,
not a great deal can be said for
either France or Spain. Certainly
not enough to reconcile us to their
occupation of Morocco, or to the
establishment of such an influence
there as would supersede ours, such
as it is.*

* Throughout the paper, the reader who refers to maps or other authorities, will

find many discrepancies in the spelling.

This is unavoidable in all cases with

Oriental names, from the license which modern writers assume of spelling every

word after their own fashion.
places being known by different names.

With Morocco a further perplexity arises from some
Thus Agadeer, or Agadir (Arabic), is also

called (by the Portuguese, during their occupation) Santa Cruz, and Guesty-

nessem (the ancient African name).

The system adopted in this paper is to
spell Anglicized names in the popular way.
presented as Marocco or Moham, with half a dozen or more terminations.

Thus Morocco and Mahomet are not
In less

known words, that which seemed the best mode has been followed.

1859.]

Wwe were all sitting together in
the shaded salon of my house
in Valetta when Victor, the young
midshipman, brought in the letters
and newspapers, one glowing after-
noon in the beginning of April,
1857.

t was a strange but very welcome
chance that brought Victor and his
ship to Malta at that time, for Mrs.
Riversdale had not seen this her
youngest darling since they parted
in the spring of that terrible ’54
which sounded the knell of so many
tender home ties, and made Great
Britain to give forth throughout her
length and breadth such a voice of
weeping as had not been heard for
well nigh forty peaceful years.

Many and bitter tears had been
shed in the Riversdale family since
that parting hour, for Claude, their
pride and joy, lay in a soldier's
grave on the fatal heights before
Sebastopol, and one nearly as dear
was hovering on the brink of the
grave from wounds received in the
same deadly struggle; and the
journey to Malta which my uncle
and aunt and Mabel undertook at
my urgent request to see poor
Charlie Powis, was almost as much
needed by the grief-worn mother as
by the gentle girl whose heart was
longing to comfort and tend her
betrothed.

Detained much against my will
in the service I undertook at Malta
when the war began, hoping tomake
it a stepping-stone to more active
employment, my chief consolation
was that it placed me in a position
to offer a quiet restingplace to the
many sick and wounded friends who
arrived there on their homeward
journey. But in none had I felt the
deep and painful interest inspired
by Charlie Powis, who had now
been my guest for nearly eighteen
months, during which time I could
not conceal from myself that his life
was slowly but too surely ebbing
away.

It was this conviction which, after
more than a year had passed in
alternations of hope and fear,
prompted me to make so urgent an
appeal to my uncle that he would
bring Mabel and her mother to see
my patient, that even the Arch-
VOL, LX. NO. CCCLX.

THE VICTORIA CROSS.

739

deacon, surrounded as he was by
duties and business of all kinds at
home, found it irresistible ; and they
had been nearly a month at Malta
when the unexpected arrival of the
Minotaur brought Victor there to
complete the family party.

On this said sultry afternoon of
April, then, we were all assembled
—the three elders near an open
window looking into the courtyard,
with its fountain and pomegranate
trees, and Charlie reclining on a sofa
near the door, with Mabel, as usual,
on a low seat by his side. He was
more languid and weak of late, for
the first flush of happy excitement
caused by Mabel’s society had sub-
sided, and the heat of the nights
began to deprive him of sleep; so
we at the window were discussing
the advisability—we did not like to
say the possibility, though that was
the word we all thought of—of
taking him to England before the
heat became more intense, when
Victor bounded up the stairs three
or four at a time, and threw his
straw hat and a shower of letters
and newspapers on the table.

‘Pouf!’ exclaimed he. ‘ What
will you all give me for exposing
my precious brains to such a sun as
this, and all that you may have
your letters an hour before the
time ?”

Nobody answered, for all were
intent on their letters. There were
some for each of us, except Charlie,
who signed to Mabel to give him
the latest English newspaper.

We were all so much absorbed
that it startled even Mabel, whose
thoughts were rarely indeed drawn
from the invalid, when Charlie sud-
denly jumped up, his face crimson
with excitement.

‘Who has done this?’ he said,
panting for breath.

‘Done what? What is the mat-
ter? Don’t agitate yourself, dear
Charlie,’ said Mrs. Riversdale, anx-
iously. But he paid no attention to
her, and held the newspaper towards
me with a reproachful look.

‘This must be your doing, Her-
bert. I wish you had asked me
first. I would rather than any-

thing this had not happened,’ he
said, in broken sentences.
3c

The Victoria Cross.

T was so perfectly unconscious of
having done anything ever so re-
motely calculated to annoy him,
that my look of blank surprise as I
took the paper from his hand
seemed to calm and reassure him;
and he suffered himself to be placed
again on the sofa, and his cushions
adjusted by Mrs. Riversdale’s tender
and motherly hand. I looked down
the columns of the Times for the
cause of this sudden emotion, and
saw in large letters—

‘Tue Victoria Cross.’

Then followed the list of names
selected to receive the new decora-
tion, with a short statement ap-
pended to each, of the act of bravery
for which it was to be bestowed,
and my eye at once lighted on the
following paragraph :—

‘— Foot.—Brevet-Major Charles
Powis.—For conspicuous gallantry
at the Battle of Alma, in saving
the colours of the regiment, when
Ensign Riversdale who carried
them was struck down and sur-
rounded by the enemy. He de-
fended Ensign Riversdale, and shot
three Russians who were in the act
of seizing the colours; and was
among the first to enter the Russian
battery. Also, for devoted bravery
on the 8th of September, 1855, in
leading two assaults on the Redan ;
and subsequentlybringingin the body
of Lieutenant Riversdale, who was
killed in the open space before the
Redan. In performing this last act
of gallantry, Brevet-Major Powis
was severely wounded.’

I handed the paper to Doctor
Riversdale, who read it in silence,
and then said :—

‘Charlie, my son, if ever man
earned the reward of valour ;
but here the Archdeacon’s voice
faltered, and he could say no more.

Mabel stole behind her father
and read the words, and then went
silently up to the sofa where Charlie
lay, now with his eyes closed, and
pressed one long heartfelt kiss on
his brow. He looked up as she did
so, and whispered, ‘7%at is my re-
ward, Mabel. I looked for and
wanted no other.’

‘Well. Charlie,’ now said Victor,
who had possessed himself of the
paper, ot grew very red over its
perusal, ‘I always knew you were
a real brick, but I never knew half of

[ December,

this before,’ and here Victor seemed
in a fair way of catching the general
infection ; for I own my eyes were
far from clear; and as for Mrs.
Riversdale, she sat with her hands
clasped before her face, and said
softly, ‘I know what it is—do not
show it tome, please. Oh, my boy,
my boy!’

Charlie was the first to speak.
Calling me to him, he began, in a
low tremulous voice, that showed
how much he was shaken by the
sudden emotion—

‘Herbert,’ he said, ‘I am afraid
your friendship has led you to do
this, and I am very sorry for it. I
cannot tell you the pain it gives me
to have these things made public.’

‘ My dear fellow, I give you my
word of honour that I have never
mentioned the subject, in an official
manner, to any human being. I can-
not deny that I may have said, when
this Victoria Cross has been made
the subject of conversation, that I
knew no one more deserving of it
than yourself; but believe me, I
should not have considered myself
in any way justified in making ap-
plication for this or anything else in
your behalf without your sanction.’

‘Then who can have done it? I
did not know that any one but your-
self was aware of the circumstance.’

‘That I cannot tell; but it must
have been witnessed by several per-
sons, and after the affair of the
colours at Alma you were a marked
man, in the regiment, at least. I
think it more than probable that
Colonel Freeman sent in the appli-
cation himself.’

‘Oh Charlie,’ said Mabel, with
tears, ‘do not regret that such an
action should be known. If you
knew how proud, how happy—’

She could not say more, but her
flushed cheek and glittering eye
spoke more eloquently than words.

‘My own Mabel,’ murmured
Charlie, ‘it was for your sake and
your mother’s that I regretted the
thing should be spoken of. I
thought it would grieve you more
to know how I came by my wound.’

‘Then you judged us—me at
least—wrongly,’ said Mabel, with
flashing eyes. ‘To think that we
owe it to you that he sleeps in that
quiet grave on Cathcart’s Hill—that
we were able to mark his resting-

1859.]

—. and know the spot where he
ies—oh, Charlie, this is more than
to owe you the happiness of a life-
time!’

‘I have indeed done you injus-
tice, darling,’ replied Charlie, his
face lighting up with fond pride as
he gazed at her; ‘that was the
very thought that was in my mind
when I knew he was lying there,
and felt irresistibly urged to go in
search of him; and I cannot tell
you how it comforts and strengthens
me to know you share my feelings.’

‘ And you must feel glad too, for
this mark of distinction, Charlie,’
said the Archdeacon, affectionately.
‘ I do—I rejoice that all the world
should know what good reason we
have to be proud of our son.’

Alas, alas! it struck a chill to
my heart to hear them calling him
by the fond name to which his mar-
riage with Mabel would have given
him a right, and to know how dif-
ferent was the bridal that awaited
him.

‘But now we must in good ear-
nest think of our journey home-
wards,’ continued Dr. Riversdale,
taking up the Zimes. ‘I see the
day for the distribution of the Vic-
toria Cross is not yet named, but it
will not be long deferred, I suppose ;
and you will have to take the jour-
ney leisurely, Charlie.’

Charlie looked at me. He knew
as well as I did the frail tenure of
his life, and as I afterwards found,
had given up all hope of returning
to England. But my uncle’s words
roused a new sensation in his breast.
He had never thought before of
worldly distinction, except as the
vague dream that floats before the
mind of all young soldiers at the
beginning of their career. Earnest,
single-hearted, and deeply religious,
he had gone through al! the trying
work of the last three years as the
mere performance of his duty;
‘doing whatsoever his hand found
to do with all his might.’ First in
all scenes of danger and enterprise,
he was to be found also by the side of
the sick, the wounded, and the
dying—cheering, exhorting, and
consoling them with the blessed
truths which almost unconsciously
inspired his own calm heroism in
the excitement of battle, or the

more painful endurance of the weary

A Christian Soldier.

741

hours of forced inactivity. Uncon-
sciously he offered to all around
him the perfect example of a Chris-
tian soldier; and he would have re-
jected with unaffected modesty the
assurance of any one who had told
him that there was more in his
courage and conduct than was to be
found in that of every individual in
the service. The idea that he had
done anything worthy of public
distinction had never for a moment
crossed his mind, and his first feel-
ing was one of pain when he found
that such was the case. But now
the latent spark—the yearning for
that fame to which no man worthy
of the name can be wholly indif-
ferent—was kindled in his heart;
and his cheek flushed, as, eagerly
turning to me, he said,

‘What do you think, Herbert ?

Do you think I am up to it? I
really have felt much stronger
lately.’
; ? think we had better take Dr.
Stracey into our counsels,’ said I,
as indifferently as I could. ‘ Re-
member that I shall lose so much
when you all go, that you cannot
expect me to advocate your depar-
ture.’

‘Oh! but you must come too,
Herbert,’ said Mabel; ‘surely you
have well earned a little leave, and
it would be such a comfort to have
you with us.’

‘ We will see about that when the
time comes,’ said I, feeling that it
would indeed be a trial to part with
the sweet vision that had brightened
my solitary home for the last few
weeks,

I could not help it—Mabel had
been the delight of my eyes, the
sole possessor of my heart since the
days when, a tiny fairy girl, the
great boy-cousin so many years
older than herself had been her
champion, her constant and watch-
ful companion, her faithful slave ;
and though she knew nothing of
this, and came to meas toa brother
in the first flush of her innocent joy
when Charlie Powis told her he
loved her, I swore then and there,
in my aching heart, to devote my
life, so far as I should be permitted
to do so, to her welfare and happi-
ness. These motives mingled with
the love I had borne my dear friend
Powis since our school-days, and
3c 2

742

added to the watchful care with
which it was my comfort to tend
him during the long and weary ill-
ness that followed on his arrival—a
dying man, as I thought—at Malta,
soon after the fall of Sebastopol.
Dear fellow! he was shot through
the lungs while climbing the para-
pet of our advanced trenches, with
the body of poor Claude Riversdale
in his arms; and it scarcely needed
the thought of how dear he was to
her I loved best of all the world, to
make me tend him as a beloved
brother. But I knew that all our
cares would be vain, and that ere
long that perfect bliss would be his
for which, even in the bright sum-
mer of his happy life, his spirit
yearned; and 1 felt it would be
difficult indeed to part from him
without the shadow of a hope of
meeting again on earth.

We were still sitting round
Charlie’s couch and discussing the
journey to England, when Doctor
Stracey was announced.

‘Ah! I knew how it would be,’
were his first words; ‘I knew I
should find you with your cheeks
like a beetroot, and your pulse
going fifty to the dozen. I came off
here as soon as I saw the papers,
as I know what idiots men make of
themselves about this kind of trash.’

This was not a very sympathetic
speech, but perhaps it answered the
purpose better than if it had been ;
for Charlie immediately became ex-
tremely cool and indifferent, and
scarcely gave himself the trouble to
take the Doctor's extended hand,
while I answered for him—

‘ There is no question whatever of
any excitement, Doctor: we were
only discussing the necessity of the
Archdeacon’s return to England,
which cannot be much longer post-
poned; and Charlie wishes if pos-
sible to accompany him.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ said Dr. Stracey,
possessing himself of his patient's
unwilling hand, and placing his
fingers on the pulse; ‘ ninety-eight,
if it’s one, and as weak as a sucking
sparrow’s. Now, my good young
friend, though you may not care for
knocking yourself up, [ have a con-
siderable objection to having all my
work undone for me: so I request
you will have the goodness to go

The Victoria Cross.

[December,

and lie down for two hours at least,
and not speak a word during the
time.’

‘ Nonsense, Doctor,’ said Charlie,
rather pettishly ; ‘ my pulse is right
enough if you would leave it alone;
— know it always fidgets me to
have it felt.’

A pretty confession for a man
who is thinking of taking a journey
of a couple of thousand miles or so!
—but I don’t want to torment you,
except for your good. Go and lie
down like a good boy, and we will
see what can be done for you.’

Charlie took himself off most un-
willingly, and after a few remarks
from the rest of the party, to which
Dr. Stracey returned very vague
answers, he asked me, if I had
nothing to do, to walk into the town
with him. On our way he spoke
seriously, and with more feeling
than I had been inclined to give
him credit for, about Charlie’s case,
and all he said but confirmed my
own forebodings.

‘Poor lad, it would be a pity he
should not go to England, if it can
be managed with decent prudence.
No human skill—at least so it seems
to me—can prolong his life for more
than a few months, and the happier
those can be made the better.’

So we agreed that at the end of
another week Dr. Stracey’s opinion
as to the degree of risk which would
attend a journey to England should
decide Charlie’s plans; and I took
advantage of an accidental meeting
with General P to obtain the
promise of a couple of months’ leave
that I might accompany my friend.
That night, when I paid my accus-
tomed visit to Charlie’s room before
going to my own, he said, ‘ Do sit
down for a few minutes, Herbert ;
there is something I want very much
to say to you.’

‘Say it, by all means,’ I replied,
taking a chair by the bedside.

‘It is about this cross,’ said he,
hesitating. ‘I suppose one could not
refuse it?”

‘Surely you would not wish to do
so,’ I asked, with some surprise.

‘I wish I could explain my feel-
ing about it,’ answered Charlie, with
a heightened colour. ‘ Yousee they
talk of acts of bravery, and of
giving this cross for valour. Now,

1859.]

in that point of view I cannot feel
that I deserve it.’

‘Well, other people have judged
differently, my dear fellow, and
you had better acquiesce in their
decision.’

‘But that is just what I cannot
do comfortably,’ said Charlie. ‘The
fact is, I feel a regular humbug, and
I cannot tell you how uncomfortable
it makes me.’

‘Do not be absurd, and split hairs
unnecessarily,’ I said. ‘I know your
conscience is of so fine a texture
that the least thing frets it; but as
you happen to have done things
which are considered by your fellow
men as acts of bravery, and as a
certainrecompencehas beenawarded
to such, what is to hinder you from
taking it?”

‘The fact that I do not think that
they can fairly be so considered.
My whole object was to protect poor
dear Claude, and when I could do
nothing more for him, to give hima
Christian burial. It was friendship,
not duty to my country, which
actuated me.’

‘I do not see that that makes any
difference, my dear fellow. Do, if

ou can, go to sleep quietly, and
eave this microscopic self-examina-
tion alone. You have fairly earned
the cross, believe me, and may wear
it without a scruple.’

‘But the microscope has shown
me something more,’ said Charlie,
and he looked so genuinely dis-
tressed that though I felt half
angry with him for his useless self-

torment, I could not but sympathize
in the feelings it aroused. ‘I have
been thinking this over for some
hours, and I cannot conceal from
myself that love for Mabel was the
real spring of all my actions; and
when that dear creature spoke so
nobly of what I had done for her
ee T cannot tell you, Herbert,
what a hypocrite I felt. In short,
it would be the greatest relief pos-
sible to me not to have this Victoria
Cross.’

‘Well,’ said I, ‘I really do not
see how you could refuse it. It is
not given for motives but for actions;
and as far as I can see, any action
which springs from the honest love
of a man’s heart for a worthy object,
deserves praise as much as if it had

The Return to England. 743

been done for mere self-glorifica-
tion.’

‘I dare say,’ replied Charlie,
musingly. ‘Perhaps I was wrong
to expect you to enter into a feeling
which I can scarcely define to my-
self with sufficient clearness to put
it into words: but I wish they had
not given me this cross.’

‘And I wish you would go to
sleep, and forget its existence,’ said
I. ‘Good night.’

As I was turning away, he called
me back. ‘If I were to die first,’
he said, in alow voice.

I looked at his thin, worn face ;
and remembering the patient resig-
nation and steadfast faith which had
never forsaken him during so many
months of suffering, I felt the tears
rush hotly to my eyes ; and though
unused to any outward display of
emotion, I could not resist saying,
‘Then yours would be a heavenly
crown, instead of an earthly cross.’

He pressed my hand warmly, but
did not speak. The hope that was
in him was so strong, so full of glory,
that even his perfect humility could
not deny or disavow it; and we
parted in silence.

At the end of a fortnight, we were
all on our way to Englandin that most
luxurious of steam-ships, the Righi.
Dr. Stracey considered that Charlie
would be better able to bear the
voyage, than the fatigue and worry
of the overland journey; and the
event seemed fully to justify his
expectations. The soft breezes and
the gentle, soothing monotony of a
sea-voyage in fine weather, seemed
so exactly suited to his condition,
that by the time we landed in Eng-
land he was a very different man
from the pale sufferer whose em-
barkation caused us so much anx-
iety at Malta; and even I, with
my fuller knowledge of his state,
could scarcely refuse to share in the
joyful hopes of the Riversdale
family, that he would soon be re-
stored to complete health.

On our arrival we all separated
for a time. Charlie went to stay
with his married sister—the only
near relation he had in England, as
Sir George Powis had not then re-
turned from South America—and
I had so many friends to see during
my short holiday, that it was late

The Victoria Cross.

in June before I could join the party
at Monksleigh, where Charlie had
now been for some time with the
Riversdales.

‘ How do you think him looking?’
was my aunt’s first anxious question,
when we were alone together for a
moment.

* Wonderfully well: I never ex-
pected to see him so well again;
and yet——’

‘Ah, that is what everyone says,’
rejoined Mrs. Riversdale, her eyes
filling with tears. ‘There is some-
thing about him—I cannot express
what it is—but he is so gentle, so
unspeakably loveable—so like an
angel, that I feel as if he could not
be much longer spared to us.’

‘Has Mabel any fears for him ?’

‘If she has, she says nothing to
me on the subject. I fancy, poor
darling, she tries to throw herself
altogether into the happiness of the
present moment, and to shut her
eyes to the future. The memory
of these few weeks will be a sorrow-
ful joy to her by and bye; and I
would not for worlds that it should

a clouded. And after all, who can
tell P’——.

We were interrupted by the en-

trance of Mabel and Charlie.

‘Herbert, will you ride with us
to Seacliff this evening, to see the
sun set? I have wished to do it
every year since I was a child, on
the longest day; and I am deter-
mined to make it out at last.’

‘With pleasure, dear Mabel, if
you think the evening air will not
be bad for Charlie.’

‘Oh, Charlie!’ she laughed, mer-
rily, ‘Charlie is the strongest of us
all now—nothing hurts him.’

I wish I had not looked at Charlie
as she spoke. The memory of his
smile, as he stood, leaning against
the window, and looking fondly and
sadly at the unconscious girl, will
never leave me.

Goethe says somewhere of his
friend Herder, ‘I think of him far
aloft in the Heavens, and beyond
the stars, as in his natural place ;
and as one but little altered from
what he was, except by the blot-
ting out of his earthly sorrows.’

Thus it is that I think of Charlie
Powis.

% * * *
Monksleigh is situated in a lovely

[ December,

valley of Southern Devonshire ; and
with its tiny village and hereditary
living, is all the property of Doctor
Riversdale. The road winds through
a noble wood of oak and fir to the
open downs, from which the ground
falls in abrupt cliffs and bold pre-
cipices of red sandstone to the
waters of the Channel. The top of
Leigh Ness, the highest headland
on that part of the coast, was the
spot chosen by Mabel to watch the
close of the longest day of 1857;
and thither we rode slowly through
the deep shade of the woodland,
and the golden glow of the evening
light on the tranquil sea beyond it.
It was truly a glorious scene
which spread itself above, around,
and beneath us, as we approached
the margin of the cliff. Above our
heads, the sky was of a pale fine
blue, melting gradually into the
rosy orange tint, in, the midst of
which, as in a sea of glory, the
mighty ball of living light was slowly
sinking to its rest: ‘The horizon
was veiled with a light tinge, which
turned to purple in the rich glow
of the sky, and floated upward in
tiny cloudlets of crimson and gold.
Below, a long line of quivering
light looked like a pathway traced
out for the setting sun, leading to
regions of unimaginable brightness,
beyond mortal ken; and the soft
heaving of the waveless ocean threw
an unspeakable charm of repose
over the whole scene. The silence
was unbroken, save by the bleating
of a few small black-faced sheep,
clustered in a hollow near the sum-
mit of the hill; and now and then a
single wild ery from a sea-bird,
winging its homeward way to its
nest in the cliffs below our feet.
The spot, too, on which we stood
was not without the interest of as-
sociation with times long past. A
chapel had once crowned this wild
eminence, vowed by some storm-
tossed Baron of old to Our Lady of
Succour; and the soft green turf
scarcely concealed the remnants of
masonry, which in one spot re-
mained sufficiently entire to show a
cluster of marble pillars, and part
of an old Norman arch. ‘The con-
trast was striking. Before us, the
grand pageant of Nature, re-enacted
in undimmed glory from day to day,
and year to year, while the work of

1859.]

human hands grew and flourished,
and decayed and crumbled back
into its original elements: the only
object in that noble prospect of
earth, sky, and sea, which bore the
impress of man’s hand, and gave its
silent testimony to the perishable
nature of all human things.

Silently we watched the departin
sun. One small boat, the only sail
visible on the wide expanse of
water, came slowly landward,
bound to the fishing village, hun-
dreds of feet below us. As it crossed
the wake of the setting sun, it
showed against the intense light, as
if made of polished jet; then gra-
dually disappeared in the gathering
shade, and was seen no more.

Still we watched silently—so slow,
so gradual, was the iodine of the
great orb, that it seemed to fasci-
nate the gaze till it became the only
object visible in all the wide gor-
geous prospect. As the last streak
of intense crimson disappeared, I
turned to look at my companions.
Mabel was sitting with her hands
clasped, the reins hanging loosely
on her pony’s neck, and her earnest
gaze fixed on the horizon, as though
she would follow with her eyes the
sunken sun. She was very pale,
and tears gathered slowly in her
eyes as, with a sigh, she prepared
to move away from the spot. Charlie
had turned from the glorious sight
to look at her; and an expression
of infinite tenderness and pity was
on his face.

‘ It will rise again,’ he said, softly
—but it was evident that he thought
not then of the setting sun; and
Mabel understood him, for the tears
fell quietly over her cheeks, though
she scarcely seemed to know that
they did so. They did not think of
me, and I followed them silently
homeward through the rich after-
glow of the evening and the gather-
ing shades of the deep oak woods.

The following morning I left
Monksleigh and returned to London.
I had taken a house near Hyde Park

for the Riversdales, and it was ar- -

ranged that Charlie Powis should
be their guest. I cannot describe
the state of restless nervousness in
which I passed the few days that
‘elena before that appointed
for the distribution of the Victoria
Cross. It was increased by the

Presentation of the Crosses.

745

necessity of appearing calm and
cheerful before my uncle and the
others, who were all more or less
anxious about the approaching cere-
mony. There was an unearthly
serenity about Charlie which dis-
composed me more than anything
else: he listened to all the arrange-
ments and discussions as if he were
in no manner concerned in them,
and more than once I could scarcely
refrain from a passing feeling of
impatience at his calm indifference.

t was settled that I should take
Mabel to the Stand, for which we
had obtained admissions, as the
Archdeacon and Mrs. Riversdale
were both unequal to the fatigue
and heat which must be encoun-
tered; and when the morning came,
and after a sleepless night I joined
the party in Grosvenor-street about
eight o’clock in the morning, Mabel
looked so pale and agitated, that I
strove earnestly, but vainly, to dis-
suade her from the exertion.

‘I must go,’ she said; ‘ please do
not think me obstinate if you can
help it, Herbert ; but I cannot give
it up.” So we went. Any one who
was present on that sultry summer
morning will not need to be re-
minded of the physical suffering en-
dured by the patient crowd; to
those who were not it would be im-
possible for me to convey an idea of
the discomforts we went through
before winning our way to the much-
envied position to which our tickets
admitted us. The Stand was al-
ready crowded, and I saw that it
would be impossible for Mabel to
witness the ceremony from the
only spot where we could find
standing-room. As I was whispering
this to her, and trying to persuade
her to give the thing up, and return
home, I perceived that we attracted
the notice of a fair young girl in
the front row, who was watching
us attentively. Presently she took
a memorandum-book from her

cket, and hastily writing a few
ines in it, tore out the leaf; and
directing the attention of a lady
near her to Mabel, in a moment the
scrap of paper was passed from
hand to hand till it reached us, and
a bright smile from the writer
showed that it had arrived at its
destination. ‘ Pardon me,’—these
were the words she had written—

746

‘I feel sure your interest in this
scene is even deeper than mine.
Let me change places with you.’
A glow of grateful pleasure lighted
up my poor Mabel’s pale face as
she read the words; an instinctive
sympathy seemed to pervade the
crowd around us; and in a moment
I saw her safe beside the kind and
feeling girl, who made way for her
to pass to the front with a smile,
and then considerately turned away
that she might not appear to notice
the almost overpowering emotion
with which Mabel looked down on
the bright array before her, and
strove to single out the figure of
Charlie Powis, while the whole
scene wavered before her tearful
eyes.

And now the bright cortége,
heralded by distant shouts, ap-
proached. The Queen took up her
station, and the short, simple, but
most interesting ceremony began.
I could see nothing of what passed,
but I read it in the changes of
Mabel’s countenance. I saw the
brightening glance as she first caught
sight of Charlie—the breathless in-
terest with which she watched his
approach, and the flush that mounted
to her cheek as she saw him receive
from his Queen’s hand the hard-
earned badge of bravery. As he
turned away to resume his place in
the little band, a deep sigh of re-
lief and thankfulness escaped from
Mabel’s lips. It was over: the
hour so long thought of—so much
dreaded, and yet longed for—had
come and gone, and he was there,
safe, before her eyes. Another
moment, and the advancing ranks
had hidden him; and with a whis-
pered word, and a cordial pressure
of the hand, Mabel left the side of
her unknown friend, and made her
wy to mine.

f these pages should ever meet
the eye of that tender-hearted
women, sought for in vain at all

ossible places of public resort
ong after the remembrance of her
gracious kindness has probably
faded from her mind, she will learn
from them how well it was bestowed,
how deeply appreciated, and upon
what thankful hearts its memory is
graven.

I would fain linger here: I feel
acutely the pain of my self-imposed

The Victoria Cross.

[ December,

task, now that the short and un-
eventful story I have undertaken
to record draws to its tragic close.
I would gladly dwell on those last
few happy moments when, with a
tender joyful pride fluttering at her
heart, Mabel walked homeward by
my side, describing the scene she
had witnessed. But the end must
be told. As we neared the house,
I noticed that a brougham was
standing at thedoor, andtwoor three
persons, a policeman among them,
were lingering about. Mabel ex-
claimed hastily, ‘Oh, there are
visitors there—what a bore !’ when,
just as we approached the door, it
was opened by a servant, who had
evidently been watching for us, and
on whose face I read at once that
something unusual had occurred.
Mabel did not notice him, however,
and was passing quickly toward the
staircase, when the dining-room
door opened, and Doctor Rivers-
dale, quite calm, but with his fea-
tures set in a deathly pallor, ap-
peared.

‘Mabel, my child, go to your
mother,’ he said; and laying his
hand on my arm, he drew me
silently into the small back room
which he had used as a study.

I do not know at this moment
whether he told me the dread
tidings, or if ‘untold,’ I ‘ saw them
in his eyes.’ I seemed to feel it at
once. Charlie was gone, and the
light of Mabel’s life was quenched
for ever.

Presently the Archdeacon led
me into the dining-room. He lay
there, my beloved friend, in his
last calm, blessed sleep, with his
left hand on his breast clasping the
cross.

When I was able to listen, they
told me how it happened. He had
moved but a few paces onward,
after receiving the cross, when he
faltered and fell, apparently faint-
ing; and his servant, who with great
difficulty had made his way through
the crowd, dreading, as he after-

- wards told me, that the excitement

would be too much for his master,
contrived, with the assistance of two
or three spectators, to remove him
from the ground. At this moment
a surgeon happened to be passing,
and stopped to inquire into the acci-
dent, and at his request Charlie

1859.]

Powis was placed, still insensible,
in his brougham, and conveyed to
the house. He breathed once or
twice faintiy, and as they were re-
moving him from the carrjage he
put up his hand and clasped the
cross on his breast. It was the last
sign of life; and though every means
were. had recourse to without a mo-
ment’s delay, all was in vain. The
brave and blessed spirit had passed
away with that slight but, to me,
deeply significant action.

It is needless tosay more. It was
all accounted for by the sudden in-
ward bleeding of the wounded lung,
and in my dear friend’s papers
abundant evidence was found that
he had expected and prepared for a
sudden death; and when we could
nerve our aching hearts to think of
his gain, and forget for a moment

Nov. 1857.

ENGLISH POETRY versus

N one of the publications of
Cardinal Wiseman is a lecture
delivered by him some time ago, in
which two of our greatest English
poets are accused of never having
_— ‘a rich description of natural
eauty’ unconnected with ‘ wanton-
ness, voluptuousness, and de-
bauchery.’

Whetheritisowing to the lecture’s
having been hitherto littleknown out
of the pale of the Cardinal’s circle,
or to the incuriosity of readers in
general, or to the indifference of
readers in particular as to what his
Eminence might think fit to assert, I
cannot say ; but nobody, to the best
of my knowledge, having noticed
either the passage itself or the points
that are covertly connected with it,
I venture, as one of the grateful
readers of those poets, and one of
the spectators of the Catholic move-
ments of the day, whom circum-
stances have much interested in
those movements (having been a
sufferer of old in the cause of
Catholic emancipation) to make
some remarks on the subject.
The use to which Catholics are apt
to turn their assertions, if uncontra-
dicted, appears to me to render the
notice desirable; and if only as a
matter of literary curiosity, I hope
it may be found not unamusing.

English Poetry versus Cardinal Wiseman.

747

our own irreparable loss, there
seemed meniiiae strangely and
touchingly appropriate in the time
and manner of his death.

I am alone at Malta now. My
silent solitary room is often peopled
with the shadows of the past, and
haunted with the memory of those
who have gone from it for ever. I
hear that Mabel bears her sorrow
meekly and unrepiningly ; and the
thought of dear Charlie Powis comes
ever with a healing balm to quiet
the restless longing that possessed
me when [I first returned to my
lonely home for his sorely missed
companionship, by sweet and solemn
images of his perfect bliss.

‘He hath outsoared the shadow
of our night,’ and who would wish
him back in this world of change
and woe P

CARDINAL WISEMAN.

The following is his Eminence’s
exordium :—

The title (he says) which a lecture
bears, will seldom convey an accu-
rate idea of what its author in-
tends. He endeavours, no doubt, to
express in a few words the subject of
which it will treat, but it can hardly
prepare the future hearer for his method,
and his particular view. We might as
well expect the inscription which once
graced the front of a destroyed temple,
found in a field, to teach us what were
the proportions, the materials, or even
the architecture of the ancient edifice.
It may have inscribed on it—‘ To Jove
the Thunderer,’ or ‘To Minerva the
Healing,’ or ‘ To the God Rediculus,’ or
‘To Antoninus and Faustina ;’ but what
manner of building it indicated to the
traveller no one could tell, unless some
fragment at least, a broken capital, a
shaft, or a splintered cornice, remained
to guide us.

And yet, perhaps, to continue the
illustration, the boldness and dimensions
of the very inscription might allow us at
least to conjecture, whether great or
small was the structure to which it gave
aname. And so far, I hope, the title
of my Lecture may not mislead. Each
one may have built up for it ‘the fabric
of a vision,’ his own idea, probably
more stately, more beautiful, more
finished than the reality will prove ; and
so far he may be doomed to disappoint-
ment. But at any rate, the title will
express how copious, how vast, how un-

748

bounded is the theme which I have un-
dertaken to illustrate.

For short as is that title, it incloses
the whole range of natural beauty, from
the mountain chain, with its snows and
huge forests, to the green sward and its
flowers ; art pictorial in all its branches,
descriptive in all its varieties, verse and
prose. It comprises all ages and all
nations—anjiquity sacred and classical ;
the medieval and modern periods.

How then will it be possible to con-
tain one’s self within reasonable bounds ?
Only, as it appears to me, by not
running beyond those of one’s own
thoughts; by not wandering for new
scenes into new roads, and losing one’s
self in other speculations. One’s own
mind is limited; one’s reading circum-
scribed ; one’s views perhaps narrowed ;
at least one’s vision is bounded by a
horizon referable to position. Such is
my only chance of not running riot, and
carrying my audience over a vast field
without path or landmark. I must be
content to feed your kind curiosity only
with such poor ideas as may spring from
my own mind, or emanate from my own
casual pursuits.

These italics are the transcriber’s.

Now -the whole object of this, and
of all the other proceedings of the
Cardinal, is that of his one great
and by no means ‘casual’ pursuit,
the extension of the authority of the
see of Rome.

Why couldn’t he say so?

The answer to that single question
would lay open the whole history of
what has been false and foolish in
the conduct of the see of Rome,
what gave it worldly success for a
time, what has filled it with secret
unbelievers always, and what ne-
cessitates, in spite of occasional
appearances to the contrary, its
decay and dissolution. This answer
is, that the see of Rome is not a
thing true enough to afford speak-
ing the truth.

Why should the title of a book
and the contents of a book suggest
such ideas of difference in the mind
of a Roman Catholic advocate?
And why, above all, when the book
is his own?

The phrase ‘ we might as well ex-
pect,’ applied to an inscription on a
temple, is to intimate an equality of
doubt between two things, one of
which is not at all doubtful, or in-
tended to be doubtful. For the
object of the temple, be its archi-
tecture, &c., what it may, is the

English Poetry versus Cardinal Wiseman.

[ December,

worship of the god whom the in-
scription designates; whereas that of
the book may indeed, as in the in-
stance before us, be unguessable
from the title.

The ‘god Rediculus,’ besides
being intended to imply the ridi-
culousness of Pagan gods in general
(though the meaning of the Latin
word is not what it sounds in
English), is made to precede the
mention of ‘Antoninus and Faus-
tina,’ in order to dishonour the
memory of the good Pagan emperor,
and to remind us that he had a wife
to whose vices he was blind. But
the gods and deified emperors of
Pagan Rome are notoriously repre-
sented, or at least were succeeded
in deification, by the saints of Rome
Catholic. Gods, emperors, and
saints, they were all alike objects
of worship, and divine; all alike
Divi. There was Divus Rediculus,
Divus Augustus, Divus Trajanus,
Divus Antoninus, &c,; and as there
was once a Divus Antonius—Mare
Antony, to wit—who reigned in
Egypt by the side of a Diva Cleo-
patra, so there was, after him, and
is still, another Divus Antonius—
Saint Antony, to wit—who presides
over pigs. The Divus or god
Rediculus presided over people re-
turning to their homes. His name
comes from the word redire, to re-
turn, not from ridere, to laugh. Is
presiding over pigs, then, a diviner
office than protecting returners
home? Or is the palm to be given
to Saint Feriol, the Divus who pre-
sides over geese; to Saint Erasmus,
who is the Divus of the stomach ;
to Saint Main, who guards us
against pimples ; Saint Blaise, who
is the Divus against ‘ bones sticking
in the throat ;’ or Saint Martin and
Saint Urban (for it takes two saints
to upholdthis office), whoare invoked
to save gentlemen who have been
drinking too freely at Catholic
dinners, from falling into the
gutter

Should Protestant readers take
this list of saints for a jest, let them
look into a work called the Pe-
rennial Calendar, the production of
an honest Catholic, and they will
find it to be but a small portion of
a like array of divinities.

If ever there was a Pagan whose
conduct and aspirations were saintly,

1859.]

Marcus Antoninus was one. His
whole life was saintly, which cannot
be said of many a saint in the calen-
dar, the best of them not excepted.
Yet suppose, as a set-off against
Antoninus and Faustina, the Catholic
Church were to be confronted with
Augustin and his ‘wild oats;’ orwith
Pope Clement and the Viscountess
of Turenne ; or with Pope Innocent
and Donna Olympia Maldachini ?
I suppress worse instances for the
sake of common humanity, and be-
cause I cannot believe them.

His Eminence proceeds to quote
some passages from Chaucer and
Spenser, descriptive of the beauties
of nature ; and here we are presented
with the extraordinary charge
against those poets which gave rise
to the present remarks. Note the
tone and the sigh of it, in connexion
with what has been said, especially
when a yearning is conceived for
‘the wilderness or the hermitage.’

The lecture is On the Perception
of Natural Beauty by the Ancients
and the Moderns ; and it is bound
up in a pamphlet with another, sub-
sequently delivered, entitled Rome,
Ancient and Modern :—

Before leaving these authors (observes
the lecturer), I cannot but express a
natural regret, that in both too much,
but I think exclusively in the later one,
every rich description of natural beauty
is connected with wantonness, volup-
tuousness, and debauchery ; so as almost
to drive one to the fear, that, after all,
virtue may well disdain to feed its
thoughts even on the most innocent of
earthly contemplations, and fly to the
wilderness or the hermitage, and there
habitually nourish penitential ideas.—
p. 8.

‘Habitually penitential ideas’!
and ‘ forced, after all,’ to ‘ fly to the
hermitage’! Oh the good Lord
Cardinal !—jovial and pleasurable
man! delighting to expatiate on the
beauties of nature and art—what
could induce him to conjure up this
frightful image of his sudden aban-
donment of the world? of his
desperate rush into solitude from
books, and turning his noble
person into a lath of mortification ?
and all because of those hitherto
esteemed English poets, Shaucer and
Spenser. Were there no previous
poets to fly from? no pleasurable
gentlemen of his own southern

Oounter Charges against the Cardinal. 749

countries and creed ?—poets at once

¢sacred and seductive? singers of

crusades, and absolute Inquisitors
writing naughty comedies ?

But this premature sally of the
Cardinal in behalf of a life of roots
and water must not betray me into
a like irregularity. Let me begin
at the* beginning, and take all in
order.

I have, then, a counter-charge, or
rather series of counter-charges, to
bring against the distinguished ac-
cuser, which may be thus stated :—

First, That the accusation against
the poets is not true.

Second, That such amount of
truth as it might be admitted to
contain, had it been far more quali-
fied, had credit been given to exube-
rances for the lesson which they
were intended to include, and had
the license been charged not merely
upon the poets in their own persons,
but upon the age in which they
lived, and upon writers before them,
would be found, as the accuser
knows, to have originated with
Catholic, and not with Reforming
or Protestant poets.

Third and last, That the object
of the whole lecture is not to com-
pare ancients with moderns, except
as a means to an end, but to insinu-
ate Catholic associations and Catho-
lic interests into the minds of its
readers, and this too by the help
and at the expense of opponents of
the Catholic Church, notwithstand-
ing the like better knowledge on
the part of the lecturer, and in rash
assumption of the ignorance of his
hearers.

Proofs of the whole of these
charges will be made manifest as
the remarks proceed, chiefly in
their order, but more or lessthrough-
out what is said; for the points on
which they are founded are so art-
fully mixed up in the lecture, that
they necessitate a like compound
treatment in handling them.

To speak first, then, of Chaucer.
Readers the best acquainted with
that poet, and readers the least ac-
quainted with him, provided in the
latter case they know Dryden's
modernization of the Flower and
the Leaf, are equally qualified to
refute the Cardinal’s assertion: for
though Dryden’s production may be
roughly stated to be as inferior to

750

his original as art is to nature, still,
besides being a beautiful poem of
its kind, it is no unworthy repre-
sentative of the original’s moral
treatment; and neither in original
nor in copy is there a syllable war-
ranting the Cardinal's accusation.
Chaucer’s Flowe* and Leaf, like
that of his imitator, is ‘ ricky in its
‘ description of natural beauty ;’ it
is rich also in gorgeous accessories
of dress and display ; rich in pomps
of knights and ladies; rich in op-
portunities of license; and yet it
not only declines availing itself of
the least of those opportunities, but
its entire treatment is eminently
chaste and reserved, and its moral
is the triumph of manly and wo-
manly virtue over idle dissipation.

Let anybody take up the poem,
and find a word inconsistent with
this account of it if he can.

Indeed, in a passage only two
pages preceding his accusation, the
Cardinal speaks of this very poem
as being full of ‘ delicate’ as well as
‘loving description,’ and does not
venture a hint that it contains a
syllable the reverse.

How, then, is his other statement
to be defended ?

The same spotless treatment, as
well as sentiment, is characteristic
of the poem entitled The Cuckow
and the Nightingale, in which there
is one of the writer’s ‘rich descrip-
tions’ of scenery in spring. ‘After
an introduction’ (says the late wel-
come Annotated Edition of his
works), ‘in whichthe poet extols the
universal power of love, he tells us,
that being unable to sleep, he rose
at daybreak one morning in May to
hear the nightingale sing, and wan-
dered through a wood by the margin
of a brook, till he came to a green
lane powdered with daisies. Lulled
by the sound of the running water
and by the songs of the birds, he
falls into a half-waking dream, when
he thinks he hears the ominous note
of the cuckoo, whom the nightingale
begs to go somewhere away, that

English Poetry versus Cardinal Wiseman.

* The picture just alluded to begins—

[ December,

he may not interrupt those who
really can sing. Then ensues a dis-
ute between them on the merits of
aoe: Here, as in The Assembly
of Foules, the cuckoo represents
profligate celibacy and the nightin-
gale pure conjugal affection. The
po. whose indignation is roused

y the base sentiments of the
cuckoo, at last starts up, and drives
him off; upon which the nightingale
thanks Chaucer, and promises to
sing him one of her newest songs.
She then calls the other birds, and
they consult together how to be
avenged on the cuckoo for his slan-
ders against love; when it is finally
agreed that they shall hold a par-
liament on the morrow of St.
Valentine before the Queen’s win-
dow in Woodstock Park. The
nightingale then sings so loud a
song that she awakens the poet,
who, in the Envoye, dedicates his
book to his lady.’

Now what is there in all this, or
in any one passage of the poem
(which I beg the reader to inspect
for the purpose of answering the
question), that is to be characterized
as connected with ‘ wantonness,
voluptuousness, and debauchery’ ?

So, in the poet’s beautiful de-
scription of the daisy and the
meadow, in his Prologue to The
Legend of Good Women; of bloom-
ing Emily walking and singing in
the garden of ‘ Palamon and Ar-
cite ;’ and of womanhood itself, an
especial and exquisite picture in the
poem entitled The Book of the
Duchesse, where is there a particle
that might not be read out loud to
any ears in the world, except such
as might pollute with their own
grossness the simplest and best-
intentioned utterances of the minds
of their forefathers ?*

The Cardinal might object to the
last, and the last but one. of these
instances; to the last, as being too
exclusively human for inclusion in
what he meens by ‘ rich descriptions
of natural beauty ;’ and to the last

Among these ladyes thus ech one,

and ends—

These were hir maneres every del.

Note particularly the twelve lines describing her countenance, and ending with—
It was no counterfeited thing ;

It was her owne pure looking.

1859.]

but one as not being of sufficient
length. But he must allow that the
occasions were tempting to such a
writer as he would have us believe
Chaucer to have been; and it is
allowable in the poet’s defence to
adduce them as samples of a
hundred instances, in which a writer
so ‘ hinted at,’ declined to avail him-
self of the like opportunities.

So much for the letter as well as
spirit of Dr. Wiseman’s accusation
against Chaucer. But it is un-
founded in further instances, as re-
gards spirit, and perhaps, if rightly
and liberally considered, in all;
for though there are passages, and
indeed whole poems, which for the
coarseness and license both of their
plot and manner give pain to the
most devoted of Chaucer’s admirers,
and are never re-perused by them
but for some purpose of criticism
by which they cannot be overlooked,
those passages and stories, by the
consent of common charity, and of
a proper knowledge of the times in
which the writer lived, when cour-
tiers themselves talked as grossly
as scavengers may now, are justly
held attributable to those times,
and to the very tendency of so un-
circumscribed a nature as Chaucer's
to be intolerant of no social phase
of his fellow-creatures. Not even
in the freest of those stories is it
the intention of the poet to side
with any selfish, degrading, or un-
principled feeling. On the con-
trary, he is manifestly all for gentle-
manly and womanly spirit, for in-
nermost refinement of mind, and
the noblest open-heartedness. The
vulgar licentiousness of his millers
and his friars is anything but
alluring. He plainly wishes to
make it repulsive. His biographer
in the edition above mentioned,
Mr. Robert Bell, is so struck with
this prevailing tendency of his
genius, and consequently holds him
up in a light so different from that
which is cast on him by his lecturer,
that in one of his comments on the
— of The Flower and the Leaf
ie says, ‘No unimportant element
of beauty in Chaucer’s poetry is
the elevated tone of moral feeling
that pervades it, notwithstanding
the occasional grossness of expres-
sion. that belongs to the age rather
than to the man. There is not a

The Cardinal’s Charge against Chaucer,

751

single piece of his which, on the
whole, does not tend to the admi-
ration of virtue, and to make vice
hateful and ridiculous.’

If by the help of this light, and
not by that of the Cardinal, which
deteriorates what it finds, readers
peruse some even of the poems
which are apparently more open to
the charge preferred in the lecture,
The Assembly of Foules, for in-
stance, which seems to have been
the immediate occasion of it, he will
find how true a light it is. The
Assembly of Foules is a story of
Saint Valentine’s Day, when birds
assemble to choose their mates. A
dispute among three eagles for the
possession of a favourite female is
concluded with a recommendation
on the part of Nature to go and
prove, for the space of a year, which
of them shall best deserve her; and
the object of the poem, as Mr. Bell
observes, is to show that ‘ where all
a equal love, the criterion must

e constancy.’ But as love, in all
the phases of its ordinance, and all
the causes and consequences of its
effects on different dispositions, em-
phatically concerns the fortunes of
St. Valentine’s Day, the poet, al-
luding to its combination of animal
with spiritual impulses, has one
stanza out of ninety-nine which
refers to the Deity presiding over
the former, and which, though it had
better have been away, would, it
may be affirmed, be as little dwelt
upon by readers in general, and as
imperfectly understood by any
readers but scholars, as it would be
harmless to them all. There is
nothing in the spirit of the whole
poem calculated to turn its general
impression into a connexion with
* wantonness, voluptuousness, and
debauchery,’ except with minds
which, from whatever causes, would
put the connexion there themselves,
or with any scene in nature itself in
which love was concerned.

So much for the charge against
Chaucer, considered apart from the
particular motives which occasioned
it, and from suppressions on a side
which should have withheld it alto-
gether. To the former I have before
alluded, and I shall speak of both
more distinctly before I conclude.

I now proceed to the charge
against Spenser.

In Spenser's poems are many
scenes rich in descriptions of natural
beauty, and almost all of them con-
nected with love; yet even in those
so connected, when the allegory
itself does not lead the poet to set
forth the perils of temptation, none
of the scenes lie open in the least
degree to the Cardinal's imputations.
Such are those of the Knight and
Una in the Wood (Faerie Queene,
Book the First, Canto the First) ;
Una in the ‘shady place’ (Canto
Third) ; Una and the Satyrs (Canto
the Sixth); the Garden of Proser-
pina (Book the Second, Canto
Seven); the ‘dainty place,’ in which
the wounded Squire is nursed by
the lovely Belphebe in a pavilion
(Book the Third, Canto Fifth); the
Bath of Diana (Ditto, Canto the
Sixth); the seat of the Nymphs in
the Visions of Bellay ; and two long
scenes, rich in description, one in
the poem entitled Muzopotmos, and
the other in that of the Guat, from
Virgil; which have nothing to do
with any pleasures but those of a
butterfly feeding and a shepherd
reposing.

Now, how comes it that the
Cardinal’s memory, or his want of
memory, or his sequestered and
célibataire imagination, allowed him
to put into the very Bath of Diana
what is not to be found there?
How was it possible, according to
this forbidden gentleman, that
Spenser should have surrounded his
Una with Satyrs in a beautiful spot,
yet not have attributed to them a
word, or even a thought, of offence?
How came a youthful squire to have
his wounds healed, and his love ex-
cited, by the charming Belphebe,
in one of the most sequestered of
spots, yet nothing be intimated by
lover or by poet that could be ob-
jected to by imaginations the nicest?
And lastly, how came the poet to
indulge himself in the two long de-
scriptions, rich in natural beauty,
last mentioned—those in the Gnat
and the Muiopotmos—and love itself
have no concern in the matter? Is
it possible, thinks this genial Prince
of the Church, for a poet of any
luxury of imagination to heap
stanza upon stanza in descriptions
of fields and gardens, and yet not
let a corner be found in them for
connexion with ‘ wantonness, volup-

English Poetry versus Cardinal Wiseman.

[ December,

tuousness, and debauchery?’ Yes;
it is very possible—very possible
and very indisputable—and Spenser
is the poet to show his Eminence
how it may bedone. The butterfly,
it is true, in the Muiopotmos enjoys
his feastings on thyme and lavender
with an appetite amounting to ex-
cess; an excess which, moreover,
the poet owns, and does not rebuke.
Taking measure of his forces of
deglutition according to the clerical
standard set up by a late famous
wit, he has a ‘seven-butterfly
power.’ Alas! how weak the word
compared

With that large utterance of the burly
gods !

Having thus established the first
counter-chargeagainst the illustrious
critic, I come to the second, which,
briefly stated, is, that the license
which he has laid to the account of
the Reforming poet, Chaucer, and
the Protestant poet, Spenser, as if
in any respect or to any degree it
had been of their own creation,
originated with Catholic writers
their predecessors, respecting whom
he is silent.

This origin is a fact so notorious
to all persons who are in the least
degree acquainted with the subject,
that the wonder is, on what kind of
understandings the lecturer thought
to impose by his silence, or how he
could reckon upon its non-exposure.

Chaucer, though a wholly original
writer as regards characterization,
manners, and style, and though a
great improver of the stories which
he borrowed, invented few or none
of the main incidents of those stories;
and unfortunately, in compliance
with the taste of his times, he some-
times borrowed the indecencies with
which the comic portion of them
was accompanied. The writers who
were thus at once his originals and
his examples were the French and
Italian novelists, authors of Deca-
merons and Fubliauz, and writers of
tales in Latin—all Catholics. The
liberties taken by them with morals,
or with monks and nuns, did not
hinder them from boasting them-
selves good holders to the Church, or
even from entering it professionally.
Boccaccio, who mingled indecent
stories of the clergy with some of
the noblest and most affecting on

1859.]

other subjects that ever were
written, lester assumed the
clerical habit himself; and before as
well as after that intimation of his
leading a graver life than he had
been used to, he was employed as
an envoy to Popes. In fact the in-
decencies a. according to the
charge in the Cardinal’s lecture,
might be concluded to have been
the sole property in Chaucer’s day
of the father of English poetry, were
thought as little contrary to good
manners during the times in which
he and his exemplars flourished, as
allusions to physical infirmities or
scandalous diseases were thought
long afterwards in the times of Pope
and Swift; or as modes of dress,
male as well as female, were consi-
dered no long time ago by ourselves,
though the draperied Mussulman
looked on them with astonishment.
To see an Eastern envoy even now
at an evening party, moving about
among a crowd of lovely women,
with their well-outlined forms, and
shoulders from which their attire
seems ready to slip down, cannot
but set visitors reflecting on what
he must think when he compares
them with his own secluded or
muffled-up females. Had the sense
of propriety or allowability been
other than what it was in the times
when Boccaccio and others wrote, a
man of his fine nature would never
have made the stories in his Deca-
meron indiscriminately acceptable to
the accomplished party of ladies and
gentlemen who are represented as
relating them to one another. Nor
would his follower Bandello, whom
Francis I. made a bishop, have
addressed one of the most inde-
cent stories in the whole circle of
the Italian novelists to a Princess
who was accounted a pattern of
virtue.

My object in proving this second
counter-charge against the reverend
critic has not been to bring odium
on the Catholic predecessors of
Chaucer (though it is impossible not
to see how little their religion re-
strained them or their times), but to
vindicate our countryman against
the exclusive responsibility with
which a Catholic has tacitly charged
him.

The case in every respect is the
same with Spenser. The court of

The Cardinal’s Charge against Spenser.

753

Elizabeth (as Catholic writers well
know, for they have taken care to
exaggerate the circumstance) was
as little a pattern of delicacy for
later ages as that of her father
Henry VIII., or her successor
James. Shakspeare is understood
to have made Falstaff in love on
purpose to please Elizabeth; and
see what love it is, and how the
lover talks of it. The Merry Wives
of Windsor is the least decent in its
language of all Shakspeare’s plays.
One of the favourites of the same
Queen, Sir John Harington, dedi-
cated to her his translation of
Ariosto, in which none of the in-
decency of the original is suppressed.
But did these manners commence
with anti-Catholic courts? No;
they flourished in preceding courts
Catholic. The Pope himself, in the
person of Leo X., had encouraged
them in the age preceding Elizabeth;
and as Shakspeare might have ad-
duced Leo’s example in behalf of
his play (not to mention one of Leo’s
cardinals also, Bibbiena, in his
comedy of Calandra), so Haring-
ton might have instanced the same
Pope’s favour in behalf of the in-
decencies of Ariosto, whose poem in
which they occur, and the poet too,
were graced with his Holiness’s par-
ticular countenance.

Hence the excuse, such as it is,
for the license in the poetry of
Spenser; not that the Protestant
English poet needs the excuse in
anything like the degree in which
it was needed by Ariosto. There is
but one production in the so-called
collected works of Spenser which
ought not to have been in them;
and strangely enough, this alleged
production, which was posthumous
in its appearance, and which the
collectors agree in thinking spurious,
they nevertheless retain ; for which,
insignificant and little noticed as it
is, they deserve severe reprehension.
The freest of the poems avowed and
published by Spenser himself was
as superior to the freest passages of
Ariosto in point of decency, as re-
finement itself is to the lowest
coarseness. Spenser, in imitating
some other of Ariosto’s passages far
less objectionable, has incurred the
reproof of Cardinal Wiseman ; but
not a word does the Catholic church-
man say of the offender’s Catholic

754

misleader ; no, not even though, in
addition to his setting these er-
roneous examples, Ariosto himself
was the holder of a benefice in the
Church, and therefore a contributor
to the scandals that were brought
upon it in the eyes of the Reforma-
tion. Yes, gentle and candid reader,
the author of Orlando Furioso, the
singer of Alcina and of Giocondo,
was himself a kind of clergyman,
strange as it would be now-a-days
to hear of the Reverend Mr. Ariosto;
for I believe he had a right to the
title, inasmuch as the benefice which
he held prohibited his taking a wife.
At all events, it was on account of
that prohibition that, like many a
perplexed Catholic clergyman before
him (his friend the Reverend Dr.
Bembo, afterwards Cardinal Bembo,
for one), he took a mistress, to
whom, as the same friend was to his
own, he is understood to have been
conjugally attached; for Ariosto,
though he was bred in corrupt times
and amidst all sorts of moral con-
fusions, was a good-hearted man as
well as fine poet, and besides being
a tender parent to his own children,
was a second father to the family of
brothers and sisters which had been
left to the care of his slender re-
sources. Thus much for poor, err-
ing, semi-clerical Ariosto, out of
that very sense of justice which his
natural pastor, Cardinal Wiseman,
declines doing either to him or to
Spenser.

But Ariosto was not the only
Catholic beguiler of Spenser. Tasso,
the rival of Ariosto, was another;
and if Tasso was a clergyman of no
kind, he may be accounted never-
theless a more sacred kind of lay-
man, being the author of the Jeru-
salem Delivered, a poem which is
the pride and glory of the Catholic
Church for its exaltation of that
church and its glorification of the
crusades. Now the ‘richest’ de-
scription of natural beauty in all
Spenser was suggested, and in part
supplied, by that very poem. The
passage is where the knights in
search of Rinaldo come upon the
bathing-place of the nymphs of
Armida. Spenser, it is true, en-
larged upon his instructions. He
seems to have thought it necessary
to show how very tempting a
thing a temptation is; and if this

English Poetry versus Cardinal Wiseman.

[December,

may have led him to prove too
much, it is to be observed, as a
counteraction, that no poet ever
tore the mask off the tempter with
greater indignation than he, or
showed the pretensions which it
disguised in colours more revolting.
But the Cardinal does not say a word
of such points in Spenser, or of any
other of those numerous counterac-
tions of vice in his poetry which, by
the common consent of critics, has
rendered the general impression of it
upon his readers favourable to the
loftiest morality , so favourable, that
a graver and greater theologian than
Cardinal Wiseman, one who was also
a great poet—no less a man than
Milton—does not scruple to call him
‘ the sage and serious Spenser ;’ add-
ing, as if in defiance of the Catholic
Church to prove the contrary, that
he ‘dared be known to think him
a better teacher than Scotus or
Aquiuas.’

A like moral testimony to his
merits is borne by Wordsworth,
in the preface to his poems,
where he speaks of the works of
Milton and Spenser as the ‘two
grand store-houses’ of poetical ima-
gination.

Spenser (he says) maintained his
freedom (from the anthropomorphitism
of Paganism) by aid of his allegorical
spirit; at one time inciting him to
create persons out of abstractions ; and
at another, by a superior effort of
genius, to give the universality and
permanence of abstractions to his hu-
man beings by means of attributes and
emblems that belong to the highest mo-
ral truths and the purest sensations—
of which his character of Una is a
glorious example. (p. xxi. of the edition
of 1832.)

No warning is here implied
against a general perusal of Spenser,
on account of an occasional luxury
of description.

There is, in fact, a healthy view
of matters of this kind, which the
severest moral poets are better qua-
lified to take than any célibataire.
And so are readers in general. I,
for one, have been a reader of
Spenser during almost the whole of
my life; and while his poetry has
furnished me with a constant and,
as it were, far-off retreat from care,
full of comfort and beauty inex-
pressible, with his woods, his

1859.]

visions, his virtues, his music, his
mythologies, his masterly and most
pictorial paintings, his noble and
most refined sentiments, I am not
aware that his tendency to see fair
play to the whole round of natural
and genial impressions ever did me
an atom ofharm. Nor do I conceive
that the most innocent persons
among the Cardinal’s audiences
would be more injured by the pe-
rusal than myself, if the bounteous-
ness of the reverend bachelor’s
imagination would but let that of
the poet suffice for itself, and so
leave equivocal passages in posses-
sion of none but that surbordinate
and very mingled interest which
in a nature so abundant and various
as Spenser’s may be likened to the
amount of room which they occupy
in the works of nature herself.
There have been ascetics in reli-
gion of so strange and unproviden-
tial a kind, especially such as com-
bine luxury of imagination with
austere professions of conduct, nay,
there is a whole ordained class of
ascetics in the Cardinal’s chyrch,
himself among them, so at var™ince
with the ordinations of heaven it-
self in regard to the human race,
that if their doctrine could be
taken at its word by nature, we
should speedily have such an edi-
tion of her works as would put an
end to them altogether. Such an
edition she insists upon not having.
She preserves her works inviolate,
trusting that the very amount of
impression which she allows to
them will induce us to treat her
liberality worthily, and save us
from the worse perils of restrictions
unfounded in reason. See, as a late
poet and philosopher intimated,
what the monstrous institution allu-
ded to—the celibacy of the clergy—

Defaming as impure what God has
pure deem’d,

has done to degrade the institution
of marriage itself, and to occasion
the prevalence of one extreme as
the natural consequence of another,
—that of intriguing licence, the
answer to the consecrate desecra-
tion.

But our emissary of Rome, for
one of those reasons (as we shall see
presently), which for reasons of a
different description are pleasantly

VOL. LX. NO. CCCLX.

The Cardinal’s Charge against Spenser.

said to be best known to a man’s
self, seems unable to mention
Spenser in this extraordinary lec-
ture on beautiful perceptions with-
out a wish to disparage him; a
strange proceeding in regard to
such a poet—one, too, who has been
a special favourite with the reverend
critic,as, somewhat indiscreetly, per-
haps, he lets us know in a previous
portion of his works ; for what busi-
ness he had to take pleasure in so
naughty a writer, and be in the
habit of thinking him ‘ delicious,’
is not, under existing circumstances,
very clear. Perhaps a question to
that effect from his confessor led to
the alteration of tone in the lecture.
Be this as it may, Spenser, though
it was impossible to omit him, or
to deny his beauty, in treating of
such a subject as that of the lecture,
has something constantly intimated
to his disadvantage. We have seen
the unqualified moral condemnation
of the poet’s descriptions. In a
subsequent passage his critic, in-
stead of contrasting what he quotes
with passages from the ancient
poets, as the professed subject of
the lecture required, compares two
of them to Spenser’s disadvantage
with Chaucer, omitting to notice at
the same time how far the diffe-
rence in point of treatment might
not be owing to difference of im-
pression on the persons from whose
mouths they proceed. And on
another occasion he goes so far as
to accuse Spenser of ‘destroying
the whole beauty’ of a sentiment in
Scripture, — a formidable charge
against a poet who was at once so
refined and so religious. But the
charge is founded on a mistake
— the part of the critic himself,
of a nature so extraordinary, that it
is worth while to quote the entire
passage in which it occurs.

The reader will know the senti-
ment well. It is expressed in the
beautiful words in the New Testa-
ment respecting Solomon and the
lilies of the field. But it will be
proper to quote also (which the
Cardinal takes care not to do, or
unfortunately for himself forgot to
do) the words which in the Testa-
ment precede and follow it.

No man (says the memorable text)
can serve two masters; for either he
will hate the one, and love the other ;

3D

English Poetry versus Cardinal Wiseman.

or else he will hold to the one, and
despise the other. Ye cannot serve
God and Mammon.

Therefore I say unto you, Take no
thought for your life, what ye shall eat,
and what ye shall drink ; nor yet for your
body, what ye shall put on. Is not the
life more than meat, and the body than
raiment ?

Behold the fowls of the air ;
sow not, neither do they
gather into barns;
Father feedeth them.
better than they ?

Which of you by taking thought can
add one cubit to his stature ?

And why take ye thought for rai-
ment? Consider the lilies of the field
how they grow ; they toil not, neither
do they spin °

And yet I say unto you, That even
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed
like one of these.

Wherefore if God so clothe the grass
of the field, which to-day is, and _ to-
morrow is cast into the oven, shall he
not much more clothe you, O ye of little
faith ?

Therefore take no thought, saying,
What shall we eat? or, What shall we
drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be
clothed ?

(For after all these things do the
Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly
Father knoweth that ye have need of
all these things.

But seek ye first the kingdom of God,
and his righteousness ; and all these
things shall be added unto you.

Take therefore no thought for the
morrow: for the morrow shall take
thought for the things of itself. Suffi-
cient unto the day is the evil thereof.
(Matthew, chap. vi.)

Now, without stopping to con-
sider these remarkable words in the
rest of their import, one thing is
clear throughout them, and not
contradictory to any portion of what
they say; namely, that the lilies
are introduced, not so much for the

sake of contrasting them with Solo-
mon, as to render the contrast itself
an enforcement of the warning
against too much toiling and spin-
ning. Our gorgeous Cardinal, how-
ever, thinking more of Solomon
than of the lilies, even when he is
going to accuse Spenser of com-
mitting the same mistake, is not
content with referring to the text
in which they are mentioned. Fan-
cying that he has caught the poet
at fault on his own gorgeous side,
and blind to the tables which he is

for they
reap, nor
yet your heavenly

Are ye not much

[ December,

about to turn on himself, he raises,
instead of a simple picture of Jesus
and his simple and beautiful words,
a grand melodramatic tableau of
the monarch, and the court of the
monarch, with whom the lilies are
compared; and in pompous words
of his own describes what he fancies
might have taken place on the oc-
casion.

A right royal scene (says his Emi-
nence) is opened before us. The Queen
of the South is come to see the marvels,
and hear the wisdom of Solomon, both
the topics of Asiatic fame. She has
gone with wonder through his palace,
and surveyed its grandeur and order,
‘the meat of his table and the apart-
ments of his servants, and the order of
his ministers, and their apparel and
cupbearers.’ (II. Reg. ix. 5.) But now
she stands before him in solemn court,
where everything that can dazzle and
astonish is concentrated. Twelve smaller
lions of gold form the avenue to the
throne, itself of ‘elephant and gold,’ of
such workmanship that ‘there never
was any such work done in any king-
dom,’ and supported by larger golden
lions. His very guards bear two hun-
dred shields of purest gold, and all the
furniture around is of the same precious
metal—for silver is of no account there.
How magnificently arrayed then must
be his princes, his generals, and his
many ministers, the envoys of his tribu-
taries, and the ambassadors of Hiram,
the gold-merchant king? Then let us
imagine to what a pitch of oriental
sumptuousness is the king of Israel’s
own person decked. How have multi-
tudes toiled for the splendour of his
array! The caves of India and Ethiopia
have been explored by patient miners,
who have plucked from the rock the
emerald and the diamond, and skilful
workmen have ground and polished
them till they dazzle by their blaze.
The divers of Persia have explored the
depths of ocean, to bring thence pearls
of , matchless dimensions and perfect
shapes. Then a whole fleet has made a
three years’ voyage to Ophir, and bought
and carried home the gold which hun-
dreds have been engaged in picking,
and smelting, and refining. Now begins
the work of artists, domestic and foreign.
The looms of Damascus furnish the
richest textures ; the purple which the
Tyrian fisherman has brought up from
the sea, is applied perhaps by the double
dyers (c:Bagerc) of Thyatira; the em-
broiderers of Sidon, Babylon, or Phrygia
have covered the mantle with variegated
‘ needle-paintings,’ as they were grace-
fully called. ‘The jewellers and gold-

1859.]

smiths of Jerusalem have vied with one
another, in producing the most perfect
work out of the most lavish materials ;
the anvil andthe hammer, the graver
and every delicate instrument for chas-
ing, and inlaying, and setting, have
been at work for weeks; till, from the
crown and the armlets, to the girdle and
the very sandals, all is royal, exquisite,
in its magnificence. And Arabia and
Saba have sent their most fragrant
spices, to shed around the throne an
atmosphere of fragrance.

So we may imagine King Solomon,
as Ahasuerus is described to us, when
‘he sat on his royal throne, clothed with
his royal robes, and glittering with pre-
cious stones,’ but not like him ‘terrible
to behold.” (Esther xv. 9.) For his
countenance is noble, and his eyes full
of the inspiration of wisdom ; and his
parted lips are uttering sentences to the
Queen, worthy of everlasting record ;
and she is exclaiming in her heart,
‘Blessed are thy servants, who stand
before thy face all day and hear thy
wisdom.’

Now, at this moment, when his heart
is the most full, and his soul the most
expanded, and when he is, and feels
himself to be, the king in all outward
and all moral greatness, let us imagine
a little angel-child to enter into the

Scripture as treated by Spenser and the Cardinal.

midst of this splendid assembly, holding
in his hand but one simple lily of the
field, plucked by anticipation from some
cottage-garden in Nazareth, or from the
purlieus of Bethlehem, and stretching it
forth, say, ‘O great King Solomon,
now in all thy glory, thou art not arrayed
even as this little flower !’

And that monarch, who had dis-
coursed of every plant, from the cedar
of Libanus to the hyssop creeping on
the wall, must have bowed his head in
reverent assent, and might be well sup-
posed to have answered, ‘Thou sayest
truly, O mysterious child; and thou
hast, moreover, spoken more wisdom in
those few words than I have uttered
this day. For my sentences have been
but the emanations of human knowledge,
but thy words have been those of a
God.’

What a wonderful pre-eminence is
here given to the lowliest work of God
over the most splendid works of man!
What an idea of the perfection which
exists in the one, in its soft and tender
texture, in the brilliancy of its colour, in
the elegance of its form, in the delicacy of
its organization, yea, in the very life
which gives it elasticity, sweetness, and
healthiness, compared with the lumpish,
dead splendour of metal and jewel. And
yet the poet who calls it

The lily, lady of the flowering field,

(as Pliny calls it ‘the queen of flowers’),

which

Yet neither spins nor cards, ne cares nor frets,
But to her mother Nature all her cares she lets,

has destroyed the whole beauty of the
sentiment. For ladies and queens are
pompously clothed without this manual
labour. No; the charm of the thought
lies in this—that God ‘so clothes the
very grass of the field’ (for in Palestine
it is such) ‘which to-day is, and to-
morrow is cast into the oven,’ that day
and night the wondrous loom of nature,
who-is but God's handmaid, is weaving
over the whole earth, mountain, vale,
meadow, and desert, a veil of exquisite
texture, variegated to infinity in pattern
and colour, in spite of scythe and plough,
drought and flood, from which you
cannot pick an ornament—a snowdrop
as well as a tulip—that can be matched
by the complicated efforts of man’s skill.
What a new perception is here of
natural beauty, hidden from the classic
mind! (p. 28.)

Such is the Cardinal’s account of
the matter hidden from Spenser’s
‘classic mind,’ but yielding up its
secret to his Eminence’s more deli-
cate perceptions. Now take the real
state of the case. The question in

(SPENSER,)
the first place, as I have intimated,
is not so much between Solomon
and the lily, as between toil and no
toil—between trust in Providence
and too much thought for the
morrow. “It suited the lecturer to
state otherwise, because it accom-
modated his fancied discovery of
what everybody had learnt before
him, namely, that natural beauty is
better than artificial. But setting
this aside, his Eminence has made
the same mistake, though to worse
purpose, which quoters of Shak-
speare make when they attribute
indiscriminately to the poet himself
the sentiments which he puts into
the mouths of his characters; for
though Spenser wrote the words,
he does not speak them in his own
person. He puts them into the
mouth which of all others was the
one to disfigure and do them wrong,
namely, that of Idleness itself, or
the Nymph of the ‘Idle Lake,’
whose business it was to convey
3D2

758

passengers to the bower of the witch
Acrasia, or Intemperance. In her,
when she made use of the lilies in
the text, it was proper to speak of
‘ladies and queens,’ and of their
being ‘clothed without manual
labour; and the Cardinal might
have saved himself the mortification
of his ostentatious mistake and his
fancied triumph over the poet, if he
had read what is said upon the pas-
sage by Spenser’s commentator, the
Rev. Mr. Upton; who being a Pro-
testant, not a Catholic clergyman,
and therefore not confused in his
intellects by the ‘ pomps and vani-
ties’ which blinded the describer of
Solomon, simply and truly says,
that the allusion to the lilies is put
into the mouth of Idleness, ‘ to show
how the best of sayings may be
perverted to the worst of mean-
ings.

His Eminence, it might be thought
by some, has even endangered the
sentiment he extols, by the way in
which he has handled it; for cir-
cumstances make a difference in the
truthfulness of truths themselves,
when the application of them is
rendered of doubtful propriety; and
it is one thing to make an abstract
comparison of Solomon’s glory with
a lily, in order to show the latter's
unlaboured excellence, and another
to taunt the king with it to his face,
when he had not merited, by any
bad conduct, such a visitation on the
glory which God had given him.
We cannot therefore take for
granted that Dr. Wiseman’s angel
on such an occasion was to be con-
sidered any angel at all. We may
rather suppose him to have been
one of the Queen of Sheba’s pages,
dressed up in the fashion of a little
opera performer of angels, for the
purpose of putting his Majesty to
one of those tests of his wisdom
which it pleased his visitor to call
forth. And we may imagine the
king smiling, and saying, ‘ Very

English Poetry versus Cardinal Wiseman.

[ December,

well done, my little fellow, and so
are your wings; and nobody is
readier than myself to acknowledge,
that works of man are not to be
compared with those to which you
cle. I take the challenge to that
acknowledgment as a compliment.
But we must bear in mind, that
colours of all kinds, and gems also,
and pearls, and aromatics, and gold
—aye, and the workmen that work
in them, and the kings that wear
them—nay, and the lilywhite hands
of ladies who teach lessons to kings,
are all (not to speak it lightly) of
the same Divine manufacture: so
that the lesson given us this time is
hardly so good as it might have
been, had it been addressed to one
of the workmen themselves, that
may have been too anxious to labour
to make me fine.’

A similar mistake to this about
Spenser’s intention, though of less
consequence, has been made by the
Cardinal in his criticism on a passage
in Shakspeare; one of those mis-
takes originating in the kind of
thoughtlessness which has just been
noticed as too common with the
quoters of the great dramatist ; but,
unfortunately, the thoughtlessness
of his Eminence becomes less excu-
sable than theirs, because it assumes
to be supereminently thoughtful,
and this too at Shakspeare’s ex-
pense. He quotes a fine passage
from the prophet Hosea, in which
‘the sower cails to the corn, and
wine, and oil, to grow, and they en-
treat the earth for nourishment, and
earth supplicates the heavens for
their dew, and rain, and sunshine ;
and these pray to the Lord for
the breath that makes all live. And
he hears the prayer of the heavens,
and they hear the earth; and the
earth hears the corn, and the wine,
and the oil; and these hear their
husbandman.’ ‘How poor,’ ex-
claims the Cardinal, ‘ is Shakspeare
beside this :—

And let the kettle to the trumpet speak,
The trumpet to the cannoneers without,
The cannons to the heavens, the heavens to earth.’

Poor, indeed, if Shakspeare on the
occasion intended to give us a
sample of the riches of his imagi-
nation, or to write in emulation of
the Prophet's text. But the words

are uttered by a poor mouthing
king, who is presiding over a fencing-
match, and exhibiting a cowardly
zeal for the success of a man whom
he fears. ‘Set me,’ says he,—

The stoups of wine upon that table.
If Hamlet give the first or second hit,

How the Cardinal makes use of the Poets.

Or quit in answer of the third exchange,

Let all the battlements their ordnance fire :
The king shall drink to Hamlet's better breath,
And in the cup an union* shall he throw,
Richer than that which four successive kings

In Denmark's crown have worn.

Give me the cups ;

And let the kettle to the trumpet speak,

The trumpet to the cannoneers without,

The cannons to the heavens, the heaven to earth,
Now the king drinks to Hamlet.

How would Shakspeare have
stared to find his king’s pompous
toast gravely compared with a pas-
sage from the Bible! How sagacious
a compliment to the Bible, and what
a compliment, above all, to poor cri-
minal King Claudius! Did the Car-
dinal never hear of such things as the
proprieties of time, place, circum-
stance, persons, and character ?

Desirous, however, as Dr. Wise-
man appears, at all hazards, to find
our great poets at fault, when it
suits the indiscreet literature of his
church to do so, he takes care, in the
course of the little which he quotes
from them, to intimate the testimony
which he considers them capable of
being made to bear to the merits of
its institutions and the esthetical
suggestions of its worship. The
favourite Catholic reference to
‘ good friar Laurence,’ in the play of
Romeo and Juliet, is not omitted in
the lecture. We are called upon to
note the ‘angel voices’ and ‘ divine
respondence’ of ‘instruments’ in
Spenser and Chaucer. From
Chaucer a passage is quoted in
honour of the Virgin Mary, and his
Eminence contrives toquote a similar
passage from Wordsworth, inciden-
tal to an equivocal mentjon of a
shrine erected on a Swiss mountain
to ‘Our Lady of the Snow.’ But
he does not say a word of the ‘ snow’
in the same poet, to which the Wal-
denses fled with their ‘ pure church,’
from the corruptions and cruelties of
the Church of Rome. As little is
breathed respecting Chaucer’s ridi-
cule of friars and monks, as little
respecting the tremendous de-
nouncements of Popery in Spenser,
and as little respecting the wicked
cardinals and the souls of ‘ howling
priests’ in Shakspeare. It will be
said that the subject of his lecture,
the Perception of Natural Beauty
by the Ancients and the Moderns,

True; but neither did it require
him to mix up Catholicism with his
esthetics, and make Reforming and
Protestant poets appear as if they
agreed with him. Requisites and
non-requisites are treated by him
with equal indifference as far as the
lecture’s title is concerned. Other
English or British poets, Cowley,
Cowper, Thomson, Burns, Byron,
Shelley. Coleridge, all of whom had
claims on his notice upon such a
subject, he wholly ignores, not
having found, or called to mind,
anything in them to suit his pur-
pose; and Keats, an enthusiast for
the beauty of nature, he mentions
only to disparage for the very en-
thusiasm, saying it amounted to
something ‘almost frenzied,’ and
accusing him at the same time of its
being ‘icy cold,’ and exhibiting
nothing but ‘cheerless, earthly
affections,’ things void of all ‘ moral
glow,’ and of every ‘ virtuous emo-
tion!’ Such are actually his words!
I must own that, desirous as I am
to observe conventional proprieties,
and to treat with due courtesy a per-
sonage who is said to be so distin-
guished for urbanity of manners in
private as this great church dig-
nitary, I find it difficult to express
myself as I could wish in regard toa
assage like that. For I knew Keats
Pimeclf as well as his poetry ; knew
him both in his weakness and his
strength; knew how far removed
both of them were from want of im-
pressibility by his fellow-creatures ;

new in particular how he felt for
those connected with him by ties of
natural affection, and with what
‘ glow’ and ‘ emotion’ he has written
of the best moral principles, public
and private. But he shall speak
for himself presently. My own
feelings I shall endeavour to content
with observing, that a robust, pros-
perous, and satisfied elderly gentle-

did not require him to do otherwise.

man might have spared, if he could

* A kind of pearl.

760

not pity or do justice to, the a
and impassioned youth whose death
was embittered by the agonies of a
love which he was never to enjoy,
and the like of which, in reverence
to the maiden sincerity of the Ca-
tholic priesthood, his hiteones is
to be supposed never to have felt—
certainly never gave way to.

For the point has now been
reached in these remarks at which
it is proper for Chaucer, Spenser,
and Saw to show, by other
passages from their works, what they
really thought on Roman Catholic
subjects; and Keats, as the youngest
and latest poet concerned in the
Cardinal’s lecture, shall follow them
with a few points of his own not
unworthy liis Eminence’s considera-
tion. The passages shall be as brief
as possible; and fortunately they
are enabled to be so without injury
to their just effect, for they are all
of the essence of good writing, and
therefore strong to the purpose.

Chaucer, though the Cardinal’s
audiences and readers are warned
against becoming acquainted with
him by the sweeping objection to

his descriptions of natural beauty,
is held up, nevertheless, by implica-
tion, as an unobjecting Catholic.
This is very hard—to accuse, and
at the same time use a man, just as
it suits a critic’s pares. and con-

trarily to what the critic knows to

English Poetry versus Cardinal Wiseman.

[December,

be fact; for nobody is more intensely
aware than the Cardinal, of Chaucer’s
hostility to the corruptions of his
church. Here then, in these pages,
are the poet’s answers to the treat-
ment which he has experienced.
Evidence has been given in proof of
his honest character as a descriptive
poet: here follow manifestations of
what he thought respecting the
doings of Catholicism.

Chaucer has hardly begun the
account of his Canterbury Pilgrims,
when we are introduced to a
prioress, who has three priests at-
tending her, and but one female.
Her rosary is adorned with a golden
brooch—

On which was first ywritten a crowned A,
And after, Amor vincit omnia.

Love conquers all things. The
motto is from Virgil, and the proba-
bility of its being applicable in the
ordinary rather than the religious
sense is a supposition not uncha-
ritable to the wearer, for reasons
that might be drawn from passages
in the tale told by one of these
priests, and from the description
(somewhat too ‘ rich’) which is given
of himself.

Her ladyship is followed by a
monk, who, in jovial contempt of
the canon laws, is a great huntsman
and diner-out. The text which ap-
plied the saying ‘a fish out of
water’ to

A monk out of his cloistre,
This ilke (same text) held he not worth an oistre.

His Reverence was sumptuously dressed :—

And for to fasten his hood under his chinne,
He had, of gold ywrought, a curiougpinne :
A love-knotte in the greater end there was.
His head was ball'd, and shone as any glas,
And eke his face as it had been anoint.

He was a lord ful fat and in good point.
His eyén stepe and rolling in his hed,

That steméd as a forneis of a led ;

His botés (boots) souple, his hors in gret estat ;
Now certainly he was a fayre prelat.

He was not pale as a forpinéd gost :

A fat swan loved he best of any rost.

To the monk succeeds a friar—

A wanton and a merry,

yet at the same ‘a ful solemne
man ;’ that is to say, he was a man

who could be solemn or frisky, ac-
cording to the occasion.

Ful swetély herde he confession,
And plesant was his absolution.

The proofs of repentance, however,

hard cash. His reason for preferring

which he exacted at confession were

them to the equivocal evidence of
of the solidest description—to.wit,

tears is not to be disputed. Tears

1859.]

might be touching, but. nothing was
like evidence that, in a modern sense
of the word, might be ‘touched.’
For, argued he. when penitents part

. Chaucer's Treatment of Ecclesiastics,

761

with their money, then, and then
only, can you be sure that they are
sorry. Besides, it is not every
sinner who is able to shed tears.

Therefore in stede of weping and praieres (prayers),
Men mote give silver to the pooré freres.

Money-making and love-making,
the gurgling of decanters, the smell
of good dishes, jollity of person,
after-dinner tendencies of discourse,
and other indications of ‘wanton-
ness, voluptuousness, and debau-
chery,’ attend the clergy in Chaucer,
wherever they appear, almost with-
out exception. ‘he train of his
Pilgrims is closed by two eccle-
siastical worthies, one of whom is a
Sompnour or Summoner (a church-

officer now called an Apparitor),
and the other a Pardoner, or seller
of indulgences. The Summoner
considers a man’s soul to be safe in
proportion to the worth of his purse.
The Pardoner has a wallet with him,
brimfull of pardons from Rome,
‘all hot,’ together with a heap of
relics, all equally convertible into
cash. And yet, to tell the truth,
adds the poet—

He was, in chirche, a noble ecclesiast ;'
Wel coude he réde a lesson or a storie,
But alderbest (best of all) he sang an offertorie ;—

that is, the portion of the mass
during the performance of which
people make their offerings.* The
Pardoner subsequently enlarges
much on these relics, and on the
horrible sin of covetousness, which
suffers people to keep in their
pockets what he candidly confesses
he wishes to put into his own. For
in the course of the pilgrimage to
Canterbury this purveyor of pardons
keeps himself in a continual state
of drunkenness by stopping at every
ale-house; upon the strength of
which, and taking, it seems, for
granted, that none of the pilgrims

are much more in earnest than him-
self, he sets no bounds to the jolly
effrontery of his tongue. He says
that he never preached but upon
one text—namely, that ‘the love of
money is the root of all evil,’ or as
he phrases it, in the Latin of the
Vulgate

Radix malorum est cupiditas ;

a theme which he delights in re-
peating, like the burden of a song;
and which, in the skilful hands of
the great old poet, becomes a fine-
sounding verse, and makes a glorious
finish to his paragraphs.

Lordings, quod he, in chirché whan I preche,

I peiné me (I take pains) to have an hautein speche,
(that is, a haughty or lofty tone of delivery),

And ring it out, as round as goth a bell,

For I canal by rote that I tell ;
(he learns everything by heart, in order that he may show off the better :)

My teme (theme) is alway one, and ever was—

Radix malorum est cupiditas.
First I pronounce whennes that I come,

And than my bullés (bulls) shew I all and some ;

Our liegés lordés seal on my patént,

That shew I first, my body to warrent,

That no man be so bold, ne preest ne clerk,

Me to disturbe of Christts holy werk.}

*

‘ And while we offer—(that we should not be weary, or repent us of our cost)
—the music and minstrelsy goth merrily all the offertory time.’

Book of Hom ilies.

Quoted in Mr. Robert Bell’s edition of Chaucer, above-mentioned, vol. i. p. 106.

t+ I quote from the text of Tyrwhitt, believin

always correct in his metre.

+ The liege lord here mentioned is the Pope.

g, with him, that Chaucer is

‘The system (says Mr. Bell)

pursued in issuing these indulgences was this:—The court of Rome granted the
privilege of distributing them to some religious house, for which that order paid a

certain sum, and then made the most of their bargain.’

p. 68.

Edition, as above, vol. iii.

English Poetry versus Cardinal Wiseman,

[December,

And, after that, than tell I forth my tales,
Bullés of Pops and of Cardinales,

Of Patriarkes and Bishoppés I shewe,

And in Latin I speke a wordés few,

To saffron (give a colour to) with my predication,
And for to stere men to devotion,

He then shows forth, he says, his
relics, consisting of rags and bones ;
promises pardon to every sin, how-
ever shocking; flatters or defames
people, according as they treat him;
and concludes by owning that there

is not a greater rascal upon earth
than himself, only he can none the
less tell a good ‘moral tale,’ or
preach a good sermon, to make
people

free
To give their pence ; and namely, unto me.
am * * * * ” *~

Therefore my theme is yet, and ever was,
Radix malorum est cupiditas.

I think this will suffice for Chaucer,
though there is a great deal more
of it. All is full of wit and humour,
of genius and good sense.

We now come to the ecclesiastical
reasons which Cardinal Wisemanhad
to quarrel with Spenser ; and very
strong, it must be allowed, they
were, for Spenser was more bitter
against Popery even than Chaucer :
—far more. Chaucer satirized its
preachers and officers, but he almost
always satirized merrily; and al-
though this was calculated to do it
great harm, and did, Papists might
— that inasmuch as the poet

eld up to ridicule the more vulgar
and openly vicious of the Church’s
emissarics, he objected to none which
good Catholics did not discoun-
tenance themselves, though he did
it with less discreetness. But
Spenser struck his blows at the
Papacy with wrath and indignation:
he held it in the light of a blasphemy

and a horror; and applied to it the
most portentous phenomena of the
vision of St. John in the Apocalypse.
Nor did he fail to treat it with ridi-
cule also. He suffered no mode of
attacking it to escape him, great or
small. At one time he describes it
under the guise of a class of shep-
herds, who, instead of being a bless-
ing to their sheep, famish them
while they feast on their profits ;
shepherds, who turn their crooks to
gold, and take upon them to dress
and live like princes—

Lovers of lordships, and troublers of

states.

(Vide the case at the present mo-
ment, here and elsewhere.) At
another time Popery is a fox, ad-
dicted to kidnapping, and throwing
parents into despair for their chil-
dren. (Note the curious continuance
of this also.) Then it is the arch-
magician Hypocrisy, disguised as a
hermit, who

Well could file his tongue as smooth as glass.
He told of Saints and Popes, and evermore
He strow’d an Ave-Mary after and before.

Again, it appears as a woman, the
witch Duessa (Duplicity) exalted
into the woman of the Apocalypse,
clothed in purple, wearing a triple
crown, and riding upon a beast with
seven heads. Then it is the same
witch in the likeness of

A lady of great countenance and place

(Mary Queen of Scots), plotting

against the Crown of Queen Mer-
cilla (Elizabeth); and then it is an
idol set upon an altar, under which,
fed with the flesh of human creatures
who die in flame and torment, lies
a horrible monster (the Inquisition),
which, with the face of a maid,
utters the most dreadful blas-
phemies.

Much like in foulnesse and deformity

Unto that monster, whom the Theban knight,
The father of that fatall progeny,

Made kill herself for very heart’s despight,
That he had red her riddle.*

* Story of Gdipus and the Sphinx.

1859.]

In like manner (thinks the Pro-
testant poet) the riddle of the
Popish creed has been read, and it
will die of the discovery.

Here be proofs enough why Car-
dinal Wiseman, the arch-emissary
of the See of Rome, should think it
as well to warn off the rising gene-
ration from the perusal of these two
great poets, Chaucer and Spenser,
the latter in particular, and to how
little amounts the value of any-
thing which he thinks he can glean
from them, in spite of themselves,
that shall redound to the credit of
that See.

So in regard to Shakspeare’s
‘good friar Laurence.’ Shakspeare,
it is casy to believe, was disposed
to treat friars and priests with the
same impartiality as he did other
men; and therefore he would not
baulk the claims of a good one,
when the latter came in his way.
But he does not appear to have
found goodness manifesting itself in
ordinary among the ecclesiastics of
his time, or in the pages of history,
so much as the interests of their
order, or contradictions to the
purity of their professions; and
therefore he certainly did not take
the Roman Catholic view of his
duty in such matters. He would
not have written the Lives of the
Four Last Popes in the manner of
Dr. Wiseman. He would have
given the book fair play; but so he
would the answer to it, under the
same title, by Signor Gavazzi; and
with all due allowance for the ex-
tremes on both sides, for the Car-
dinal’s incredible rese colour and
the Signor’s outrageous black, his
dramas tell us plainly enough which
of the two saan on the whole, he
would have considered as giving
the likelier account of Papal govern-
ment. Be the speakers in Shak-
speare, and not himself, as respon-
sible as they should be for what
they say, it is not difficult to gather
from a writer so voluminous what
his opinions are on great reigning
subjects. There are things which
no dramatist would suffer any of his
speakers to say, if he himself held
them in secret or sectarian horror ;
and without considering how far
Shakspeare carried his self-permis-
sions in this respect, it is certain
that he did not stop them as short

Shakspeare’s Treatment of Ecclesiastics.

as Dr. Wiseman would fain leave us
to suppose. His Popes and Cardi-
nals are far more worldly than holy.
Several of his plays are connected
with priestly ambition, and he spares
none of the hard and contemptuous
words which civilians and soldiers
are inclined to bestow upon it, any
more than he does a clown’s allu-
sion to the fitness of the ‘nun’s
lips’ for the ‘friar’s mouth.’ He
pits the ‘Good Duke Humphrey’
against the wicked Cardinal Beau-
fort; makes one of his best puns
or bits of slipslop on a ‘woman
cardinally given ;’ and brings upon
the stage, in all its particulars, a re-
markable occurrence which took
place in the reign of Henry VI.,
namely, the detection, by the Duke
just mentioned, of a pretended
Catholic miracle of the cure of a
blind man. The man, amidst cries
from the multitude of ‘a miracle! a
miracle !’ is brought in, pretending
that he was born blind, and that he
had just had his sight bestowed on
him at the shrine of St. Alban.

What colour is this cloak of? (says
the Duke.)

Red, master ; red as blood.

Why that’s well said. What colour
is my gown of?

Black, forsooth ; coal-black as jet.

So he knows colours by name,
though he had never seen them.
The man has pretended further-
more to be lame, and the Duke
offers him his choice between a
jump over a stool and a whipping.
He jumps over; and the multitude
follow him off, again crying ‘a
miracle !’

Observe that this is an episode
in his play, which Shakspeare need
not have introduced. Bring a
miracle before Cardinal Wiseman,
and his Eminence, it seems, will
notice it also, and with equal bold-
ness; but it will be in order to
express his belief in it, let it have
been never so scoffed at; for this
is what he has done for no less worn-
out a story than the miracle of St.
Januarius. To miracles like this,
and to others more startling still,
because new, ‘all hot’ from Rome,
and coming fresh over the Channel
in no conveyance but their duffel
cloaks, is to be added, it seems, in
this nineteenth century, ‘and in
minds the least given either to ner-

English Poetry versus Cardinal Wiseman.

vous sensibility or to an ignorance
of books, the miracle of all miracles;
namely, that of believing in them.
I waive the excessively jesting
manner in which Shakspeare al-
lows many of his characters to speak
on the most tremendous points of
theology, particularly in the Merry
Wives of Windsor, Cymbeline, Mac-
beth, and Much Ado About Nothing,
because it might be considered tra-
velling out of the necessity of the
record; but it is really time for
Catholics to have done with ‘ good
friar Laurence,’ lest upon the prin-
ciple of the greater including the
less, other respondents may not
think such a proceeding superfluous.
We come, therefore, to Words-

[ December,

worth, whom it would also have
been prudent in Dr. Wiseman to let
alone. Even the reference to Our
Lady of the Bower was not very
wise; for though the poet on the
occasion puts himself into as Catho-
lic a frame of mind as he can, and
makes the best of the comfort which
the mountaineers get out of their
resort to her shrine, he cannot help
saying, that in despite of themselves,
or without any intent on their parts,
their very offerings, in thanks for
relief, tell of reliefs not obtained ; of
‘comfortless despairs,’ and many a
‘cureless pang.’ But what does the
Cardinal say to the following re-
marks on ‘ Transubstantiation,’ or
the Mass ?

With dim association
The tapers burn ; the odorous incense feeds
A greedy flame ; the pompous mass proceeds ;
The Priest bestows the appointed consecration ;
And, while the Host is raised, its elevation
An awe and supernatural horror breeds,
And all the people bow their heads, like reeds
To a soft breeze, in lowly adoration.

This Valdo brooked not.

(Valdo or Waldo, the Reformer, from whom his disciples, the Wal-
denses [ Vallenses, or valley-men] are erroneously supposed to have taken

their name.)

On the banks of Rhone
He taught, till persecution chaced him thence,
To adore the Invisible, and Him alone.
Nor were his followers loth to seek defence
Mid woods and wilds, or nature’s craggy throne,
From rites that trample upon soul and sense.

‘ Rites that trample upon soul and
sense.” That is a pretty strong de-
scription of the mass by the recor-
der of Our Lady of the Snow.

The following, too, from a sonnet
entitled ‘ Monastic Voluptuousness,’
is not a little potent,—somewhat

indeed ‘rich and strange,’ I fear,
from the precise Wordsworth;
though it is perfectly warrantable,
and will harm nobody but the monks
themselves, who are described by
existing reformers as liable to simi-
lar charges still :—

Round many a convent’s blazing fire

Unhallow’d threads of revelry are spun :

There Venus sits disguistd as a Nun,
While Bacchus, clothed in semblance of a Friar,
Pours out his choicest beverage high and higher
Sparkling, until it cannot choose but run

Over the bowl, whose silver lip hath won

An instant kiss of masterful desire

To stay the precious waste. Through every brain
The domination of the sprightly juice

Spreads high conceits, to madding Fancy dear ;
Till the arch’d roof, with resolute abuse

Of its grave echoes, swells a choral strain,
Whose votive burthen is, ‘oUR KINGDOM'S HERE.’

These last words are in the poet’s What sort of comment
is made on that saying, not merely
by such contradictions of it as these,
but by the worldly spectacles, the
pompous processions, the gorgeous

own capitals. ‘ My kingdom is not
of this world,’ said One, whose name,
though he is thus alluded to, it is not
easy to mention in bacchanalian

company.

1859.]

dresses, the grand military and
musical accompaniments, drums,
trumpets, and guns, and the su-
preme, uplifted figure of the Pontiff
over all, which Cardinal Wiseman
delights to paint P

Yet fond as he thus is of noise
and show, he finds the ‘bright’
poetry of Keats ‘icy cold,’ with ‘no
moral glow’ in it, ‘no virtuous af-
fection,’ ‘ no sight of that real Sun,
the “ intellectual Light” of Dante,
without whom nature is dull’ to
‘observe the most dainty landscape.’
His ‘ affections’ are ‘ cheerless;’ and
it is no wonder that ‘Endymion, the
enamoured of the cold moon,’ should
be their type. It is to be regretted
ponee that Keats, under the com-

ined impulse of a sense of his lofty
aims as a youth and of his admira-
tion for some fair object of his
affections whose beauty may have
been thought to have a look of cold-
ness, took Endymion for the hero
of his first considerable effort in
poetry; and it is not to be denied
that the poem, with all its genius, is
as sensuous of its kind and as full
of external glitter as the Cardinal’s

_ of finding fault.

The Cardinal’s Charge against Keats.

favourite descriptions are in their
ownway. But Dante’s ‘intellectual
sun’ had a side to it, the heat of
which was more calculated to wither
up the best affections, human and
divine, than all the coldest earthly
materialities conceivable. Modern
emissaries of his creed take care
never to mention it. Keats was
sorry afterwards that he wrote
Endymion; but it is only one of his
poems, and a most false impression
is left upon the minds of his critic’s
believers by constituting it the re-
presentative of all which his poetry
contains. Even Endymion is not
without strong evidences of an af-
fectionate and warm-hearted nature
to those who are not unwilling to
find them ; and there is a passage
in it which, offensive as it was to the
then ruling powers (those of the
Regent), and severely visited as it
was by the literary portion of their
servants, hurt perhaps other readers
not so desirous, till they came to it,
It is at the begin-
ning of Book the Third, where the
poet speaks of personages

Who lord it o’er their fellow-men
With most prevailing tinsel ;

and who, without one redemption

Of sanctuary splendour, are still dight
By the blear-eyed nations in empurpled vests,

But what does the Cardinal say to
the bold personal denouncement of
the Regent himself, as the ‘minion
of grandeur,’ with his ‘ wretched
crew?’ is there ‘no moral glow’
there P—or to the poet’s prayer for
his ‘ country’s honour,’ in the Ode to
Hope ?—to his enthusiastic praises,
more than once, of Alfred the
Great and Kosciusko?—or,to the
numerous affectionate little poems
addressed to his brothers and
friends, the former in particular,
evincing a loving domestic nature,
willing to be content with the gen-
tlest household pleasures? Is there
‘no virtuous emotion’ in all these
effusions? Even in the Paganism
of his last and greatest production,
the noble fragment of Hyperion, a
sentiment is put into the mouth of
one of the gods, the loving and truly
divine beauty of which might have
shamed many a theological opinion
not so consistent with it, as all Keats’s

religious opinions were. ‘I am smo-
ther’d up,’ says decaying Saturn,
And buried from all godlike exercise
Of influence benign on planets pale,

Of admonitions to the winds and seas,
Of peaceful sway above man’s harvesting,
And all those acts which Deity supreme
Doth ease its heart of love in.

This is the poem, however, in
which, I fear, is to be found the
secret of Cardinal Wiseman’s appa-
rently unaccountable charge of the
absence of all ‘moral glow’ and
‘virtuous emotion’ from the pages
of his brother enthusiast for natural
beauty ; for the subject of the poem
is the change of one dynasty of
creed for another ; and this subject,
which of itself is not of a nature to
bespeak the goodwill of any old and
declining church, was calculated to
excite the special hatred of one in
which incurability and infallibility,
whatever it may pretend: to the
contrary, are secretly felt to be

A Few Words on Non-intervention.

identical. The only church which
can live is that which can reform ;
and nothing whatsoever which needs
reform can ultimately live in that.
Saturn and Hyperion, the reigning

[December,

gods in Keats's poem, had grown
old, and were to be displaced by
Jove and Apollo, and the melancholy
necessity is acknowledged by one of
the family :

Now comes the pain of truth, to whom ’tis pain.
O folly! for to bear all naked truths,
And to envisage circumstance, all calm,

This is the top of sovereignty.

Mark well!

As Heaven and Earth are fairer, fairer far,

Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though once chiefs,
And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth

In shape and form compact and beautiful,

In will, in action free, companionship,

And thousand other signs of purer life,

So on our heels a fresh perfection treads,

A power more strong in beauty, born of us

And fated to succeed us, as we pass

In glory that old Darkness.

Amen. So be it. So may Catho-
licism pass away, as the poet un-
doubtedly wished, leaving to reign
in its stead a religion with all the
good in it of its predecessor, and
none of its evil.

This consummation all Dr. Wise-
man’s uses or misuses of English
poets will not hinder ; and the more
cunningly he makes his efforts, the
more they will betray themselves,
and the sooner the consummation
will be hastened. He is a man of
great natural abilities, considerable
scholarship, and no little taste, when
his critical palate is not tempted

A FEW WORDS ON

HERE is a country in Europe,
equal to the greatest in extent

of dominion, far exceeding any
other in wealth, and in the power
that wealth bestows, the declared
principle of whose foreign policy is,
to let other nations alone. No
country apprehends, or affects to
apprehend from it any aggressive
designs. Power, from of old, is
wont to encroach upon the weak,
and to quarrel for ascendency with
those who are as strong as itself.
Not so this nation. It will hold its
own, it will not submit to encroach-
ment, but if other nations do not
meddle with it, it will not meddle
with them. Any attempt it makes
to exert influence over them, even
by persuasion, is rather in the ser-
vice of others, than of itself: to
mediate in the quarrels which break
out between foreign States, to arrest

to excess. But disingenuous state-
ments, and gorgeous and luxuri-
ating descriptions, whether of art
or nature, are not calculated to
remove certain impressions respect-
ing scarlet ladies from the severe
English mind; and it would have
done no harm to the credit given
him, and I dare say justly given
him, for consideration towards
others when speaking in his own
person, if he had spared his fellow-
readers of the English poets the
necessity of charging him with false
accusations of their common bene-
factors.
Lrien Hunt.

NON-INTERVENTION.

obstinate civil wars, to reconcile bel-
ligerents, to intercede for mild treat-
ment of the vanquished, or, finally,
to procure the abandonment of
some national crime and scandal to
humanity, such as the slave-trade.
Not only does this nation desire no
benefit to itself at the expense of
others, it desires none in which all
others do not as freely participate.
It makes no treaties stipulating for
separate commercial advantages. If
the aggressions of barbarians force
it to a successful war, and its vic-
torious arms put it in a position to
command liberty of trade, whatever
it demands for itself it demands for
all mankind. The cost of the war
is its own; the fruits it shares in
fraternal equality with the whole
human race. Its own ports and
commerce are free as the air and
the sky: all its neighbours have

1859.] Ideas of English Foreign Policy on the Continent.

full liberty to resort to it, paying
either no duties, or, if any, gene-
rally a mere equivalent for what is
paid by its own citizens ; nor does
it concern itself though they, on
their part, keep all to themselves,
and persist in the most jealous and
narrow-minded exclusion of its mer-
chants and goods.

A nation adopting this policy is
a novelty in the world; so much
so, it would appear, that many are
unable to believe it when they see
it. By one of the practical para-
doxes which often meet us in human
affairs, it is this nation which finds
itself, in respect of its foreign policy,
held up to obloquy as the type of
egoism and selfishness; as a nation
which thinks of nothing but of out-
witting and out-generalling its
neighbours. An enemy, or a self-
fancied rival who had been dis-
tanced in the race, might be con-
ceived to give vent to such an ac-
cusation in a moment of ill-temper.
But that it should be accepted by
lookers-on, and should pass into a
popular doctrine, is enough to sur-
prise even those who have best
sounded the depths of human pre-
judice. Such, however, is the esti-
mate of the foreign policy of Eng-
land most widely current on the
Continent. Let us not flatter our-
selves that it is merely the dis-
honest pretence of enemies, or of
those who have their own purposes
to serve by exciting odium against
us, a class including all the Protec-
tionist writers, and the mouthpieces
of all the despots and of the
Papacy. The more blameless and
laudable our policy might be,
the more certainly we might
count on its being misrepre-
sented and railed at by these
worthies. Unfortunately the belief
is not confined to those whom they
can influence, but is held with all
the tenacity of a prejudice, by in-
numerable persons free from inte-
rested bias. So strong a hold has
it on their minds, that when an
Englishman attempts to remove it,
all their habitual politeness does
not enable them to disguise their
utter unbelief in his disclaimer.
They are firmly persuaded that no
word is said, nor act done, by Eng-
lish statesmen in reference to
foreign affairs, which has not for its

767

motive principle some peculiarly
English interest. Any profession
of the contrary appears to them too
ludicrously transparent a: attempt
to impose upon them. Those most
friendly to us think they make a
great concession in admitting that
the fault may possibly be less with
the English people, than with the
English Government and _ aristo-
cracy. We do not even receive
credit from them for following our
own interest with a straightforward
recognition of honesty as the best
policy. They believe that we have
always other objects than those we
avow; and the most far-fetched and
unplausible suggestion of a selfish
purpose appears to them better en-
titled to credence than anything so
utterly incredible as our disinte-
restedness. Thus, to give one in-
stance among many, when we taxed
ourselves twenty millions (a pro-
digious sum in their estimation) to
get rid of negro slavery, and, for the
same object, perilled, as everybody
thought, destroyed,as many thought
—the very existence of our West
Indian colonies, it was, and still is,
believed, that our fine professions
were but to delude the world, and
that by this self-sacrificing beha-
viour we were endeavouring to gain
some hidden object, which could
neither be conceived nor described,
in the way of pulling down other
nations. The fox who had lost his
tail had an intelligible interest in
persuading his neighbours to rid
themselves of theirs: but we, it is
thought by ow neighbours, cut off
our own magnificent brush, the
largest and finest of all, in hopes of
reaping some inexplicable advantage
from inducing others to do the
same.

It is foolish attempting to despise
all this—persuading ourselves that
it is not our fault, and that those
who disbelieve us would not believe
though one should rise from the
dead. Nations, like individuals,
ought to suspect some fault in them-
selves when they find they are
generally worse thought of than
they think they deserve; and they
may well know that they are some-
how in fault when almost everybody
but themselves thinks them crafty
and hypocritical. It is not solely
because England has been more suc-

768

cessful than other nations in gaining
what they are all aiming at, that
they think she must be following
after it with a more ceaseless and a
more undivided chase. This indeed
is a powerful predisposing cause,
inclining and preparing them for the
belief. It is a natural supposition
that those who win the prize have
striven for it; tlat superior success
must be the fruit of more unremit-
ting endeavour; and where there is
an obvious abstinence from the or-
dinary arts employed for distancing
competitors, and they are distanced
nevertheless, people are fond of be-
lieving that the means employed
must have been arts still more subtle
and profound. This preconception
makes them look out in all quarters
for indications to prop up the selfish
explanation of our conduct. If our
ordinary course of action does not
favour this interpretation, they
watch for exceptions to our ordinary
course, and regard these as the real
index to the purposes within. They
moreover accept literally all the
habitual expressions by which we
represent ourselves as worse than
we are; expressions often heard
from English statesmen, next to
never from those of any other coun-
try—partly because Englishmen,
beyond all the rest of the human
race, are so shy of professing vir-
tues that they will even profess vices
instead; and partly because almost
all English statesmen, while careless
to a degree which no foreigner can
credit, respecting the impression
they produce on foreigners, commit
the obtuse blunder of supposing
that low objects are the only ones
to which the minds of their non-
aristocratic fellow-countrymen are
amenable, and that it is always ex-
pedient, if not necessary, to place
those objects in the foremost rank.

All, therefore, who either speak
or act in the name of England, are
bound by the strongest obligations,
both of prudence and of duty, to
avoid giving either of these handles
for misconstruction: to puta severe
restraint upon the mania of profess-
ing to act from meaner motives
than those by which we are really
actuated, and to beware of per-
versely or capriciously singling out
some particular instance in which
to act on a worse principle than that

A Few Words on Non-Intervention.

[ December,

by which we are ordinarily guided.
Both these salutary cautions our
practical statesmen are, at the pre-
sent time, flagrantly disregarding.

We are now in one of those criti-
cal moments, which do not occur
once in a generation, when the whole
turn of European events, and the
course of European history for a
long time to come, may depend on
the conduct and on the estimation
of England. At such a moment, it
is difficult to say whether by their
sins of speech or of action our states-
men are most effectually playing
into the hands of our enemies, and
giving most colour of justice to in-
jurious misconception of our charac-
ter and policy as a people.

To take the sins of speech first:
What is the sort of language held in
every oration which, during the
present European crisis, any Eng-
lish minister, or almost any con-
siderable public man, addresses to
Parliament or to his constituents P
The eternal repetition of this shabby
refrain—* We did not interfere, be-
cause no English interest was in-
volved ;’ ‘ We ought not to interfere
where no Engksh interest is con-
cerned.’ England is thus exhibited
as a country whose most distin-
guished men are not ashamed to
profess, as politicians, a rule of ac-
tion which no one, not utterly base,
could endure to be accused of as the
maxim by which he guides his pri-
vate life; not to move a finger for
others unless he sees his private ad-
vantage init. There is much to be
said for the doctrine that a nation
should be willing to assist its neigh-
bours in throwing off oppression
and gaining free institutions. Much
also may be said by those who main-
tain that one nation is incompetent
to judge and act for another, and
that each should be left to help
itself, and seek advantage or submit
to disadvantage as it can and will.
But of all attitudes which a nation
can take up on the subject of inter-
vention, the meanest and worst is
to profess that it interferes only
when it can serve its own objects by
it. Every other nation is entitled
to say, ‘It seems, then, that non-
interference is not a matter of prin-
ciple with you. When you abstain
from interference, it is not because
you think it wrong. You have no

1859.]

objection to interfere, only it must
not be for the sake of those you in-
terfere with ; they must not suppose
that you have any regard for their
good. The good of others is not
one of the things you care for; but
you are willing to meddle, if by
meddling you can gain anything for
yourselves.’ Such is the obvious
interpretation of the language used.

There is scarcely any necessity to
say, writing to Englishmen, that
this is not what our rulers and poli-
ticians really mean. Their language
is not a correct exponent of their
thoughts. They mean a part only
of what they seem to say. They
do mean to disclaim interference for
the sake of doing good to foreign
nations. They are quite sincere
and in earnest in repudiating this.
But the other half of what their
words express, a willingness to med-
dle if by doing so they can promote
any interest of England, they do
not mean. The thought they have
in their minds, is not the interest
of England, but her security.
What they would say, is, that they
are ready to act when England’s
safety is threatened, or any of her
interests hostilely or unfairly en-
dangered. ‘This is no more than
what all nations, sufficiently power-
ful for their own protection, do, and
no one questions their right to do.
It is the common right of self-
defence. Butif we mean this, why,
in Heaven's name, do we take every
possible opportunity of saying, in-
stead of this, something exceedingly
different? Not self-defence, but
aggrandizement, is the sense which
foreign listeners put upon our words.
Not simply to protect what we have,
and that merely against unfair arts,
not against fair rivality ; but to add
to it more and more without limit,
is the purpose for which foreigners
think we claim the liberty of inter-
meddling with them and their
affairs. If our actions make it im-
possible for the most prejudiced
observer to believe that we aim at
or would accept any sort of mer-
cantile monopolies, this has no effect
on their minds but to make them
think that we have chosen a more
cunning way to the sameend. It
is a generally accredited opinion
among Continental politicians, espe-
cially those who think themselves

Misrepresentation of the National Feeling.

769

particularly knowing, that the very
existence of England depends upon
the incessant acquisition of new
markets for our manufactures ; that
the chase after these is an affair of
life and death to us; and that we
are at all times ready to trample on
every obligation of public or inter-
national morality, when the alter-
native would be, pausing for a mo-
ment in that race. It would be
superfluous to point out what pro-
found ignorance and misconception
of all the laws of national wealth,
and all the facts of England’s com-
mercial condition, this opinion pre-
supposes: but such ignorance and
misconception are unhappily very
general on the Continent ; they are
but slowly, if perceptibly, giving
way before the advance of reason ;
and for generations, perhaps, to
come, we shall be judged under
their influence. Is it requiring too
much from our practical politicians
to wish that they would sometimes
bear these things in mind? Does
it answer any good purpose to ex-
press ourselves as if we did not
scruple to profess that which we
not merely scruple to do, but the
bare idea of doing which never
crosses our minds? Why should
we abnegate the character we might
with truth lay claim to, of being
incomparably the most conscientious
of all nations in our national acts ?
Of all countries which are sufficiently
powerful to be capable of being
dangerous to their neighbours, we
are perhaps the only one whom
mere scruples of conscience would
suffice to deter from it. We are
the only people among whom, by no
class whatever of society, is the in-
terest or glory of the nation con-
sidered to be any suflicient excuse
for an unjust act; the only one
which regards with jealousy and
suspicion, and a proneness to hostile
criticism, precisely those acts of its
Government which in other coun-
tries are sure to be hailed with ap-

lause, those by which territory has

een acquired, or political influence
extended. Being in reality better
than other nations, in at least the
negative part of international mo-
rality, let us cease, by the language
we use, to give ourselves out as
worse.

But if we ought to be careful of

A Few Words on Non-Intervention.

our language, a thousand times
more obligatory is it upon us to be
careful of our deeds, and not suffer
ourselves to be betrayed by any of
our leading men into a line of con-
duct on some isolated point, utterly
opposed to our habitual principles
of action—conduct such that if it
were a fair specimen of us, it would
verify the calumnies of our worst
enemies, and justify them in repre-
senting not only that we have no
regard for the good of other nations,
but that we actually think their
good and our own incompatible, and
will go all lengths to prevent others
from realizing even an advantage in
which we ourselves are to share.
This pernicious, and, one can scarcely
help calling it, almost insane blun-
der, we seem to be committing on
the subject of the Suez Canal.

It is the universal belief in France
that English influence at Constanti-
nople, strenuously exerted to defeat
this project, is the real and only in-
vincible obstacle to its being carried
into effect. And unhappily the pub-
lic declarations of our present Prime
Minister not only bear out this per-
suasion, but warrant the assertion
that we oppose the work because,
in the opinion of our Government,
it would be injurious to the interest
of England. If such be the course
we are pursuing, and such the
motive of it, and if nations have
duties, even negative ones, towards
the weal of the human race, it is
hard to say whether the folly or the
immorality of our conduct is the
most painfully conspicuous.

Here is a project, the practica-
bility of which is indeed a matter in
dispute, but of which no one has
attempted to deny that, supposing
it realized, it would give a facility to
commerce, and consequently a sti-
mulus to production, an encourage-
ment to intercourse, and therefore
to civilization, which would entitle
it toa high rank among the great
industrial improvements of modern
times. The contriving of new means
of abridging labour and economizing
outlay in the operations of industry,
is the object to which the larger half
of all the inventive ingenuity of
mankind is at present given up;
and this scheme, if realized, will
save, on one of the great highways
of the world’s traffic, the circum-

[December,

navigation of a continent. An easy
access of commerce is the main
source of that material civilization,
which, in the more backward regions
of the earth, is the necessary con-
dition and indispensable machinery
of the moral; and this scheme
reduces practically by one half, the
distance, commercially speaking,
between the self-improving nations
of the world and the most important
and valuable of the unimproving.
The Atlantic Telegraph is esteemed
an enterprise of world-wide impor-
tance because it abridges the transit
of mercantile intelligence merely.
What the Suez Canal would shorten
is the transport of the goods them-
selves, and this to such an extent as
probably to augment it manifold.
Let us suppose, then—for in the
present day the hypothesis is too
un-English to be spoken of as any-
thing more than a supposition—let
us suppose that the English nation
saw in this great benefit to the
civilized and uncivilized world a
danger or damage to some peculiar
interest of England. Suppose, for
example, that it feared, by shorten-
ing the road, to facilitate the access
of foreign navies to its Oriental pos-
sessions. The supposition imputes
no ordinary degree of cowardice and
imbecility to the national mind ;
otherwise it could not but reflect
that the same thing which would
facilitate the arrival of an enemy,
would facilitate also that of succour;
that we have had French fleets in
the Eastern seas before now, and
have fought naval battles with them
there, nearly a century ago; that if
we ever became unable to defend
India against them, we shall as-
suredly have them there without
the aid of any canal; and that our
power of resisting an enemy does
not depend upon putting a little
more or less of obstacle in the way
of his coming, but upon the amount
of force which weare abletooppose to
him when come. Letusassume, how-
ever, that the success of the project
would do more harm to England in
some separate capacity, thanthe good
which, as the chief commercial na-
tion, she would reap from the great
increase of commercial intercourse.
Let us grant this: and I now ask,
what then? Is there any morality,
Christian or secular, which bears

1859.]

out a nation in keeping all the rest
of mankind out of some great ad-
vantage, because the consequences
of their obtaining it may be to itself,
in some imaginable contingency, a
cause of inconvenience? Is a nation
at liberty to adopt as a practical
maxim, that what is good for the
human race is bad for itself, and to
withstand it accordingly ? What is
this but to declare that its interest
and that of mankind are incom-
patible—that, thus far at least, it is
the enemy of the human race?
And what ground has it of com-
plaint if, in return, the human race
determine to be its enemies? So
wicked a principle, avowed and acted
on by a nation, would entitle the rest
of the world to unite in a league
against it, and never to make peace
until they had, if not reduced it to
insignificance, at least sufficiently
broken its power to disable it from
ever again placing its own self-in-
terest before the general prosperity
of mankind.

There is no such base feeling in
the British people. They are accus-
tomed to see their advantage in
forwarding, not in keeping back,
the growth in wealth and civiliza-
tion of the world. The opposition
to the Suez Canal has never been
a national opposition. With their
usual indifference to foreign affairs,
the public in general have not
thought about it, but have left it, as
(unless when particularly excited)
they leave all the management of
their foreign policy, to those who,
from causes and reasons connected
only with internal politics, happen
for the time to be in office. What-
ever has been done in the name of
England in the Suez affair has been
the act of individuals ; mainly, it is
probable, of one individual; scarcely
any of his countrymen either
prompting or sharing his purpose,
and most of those who have paid
any attention to the subject (unfor-
tunately a very small number) being,
to all appearance, opposed to him.

But (it is said) the scheme cannot
be executed. If so, why concern
ourselves about it? If the project
can come to nothing, why profess
gratuitous immorality and incur
gratuitous odium to prevent it from
being tried? Whether it will suc-
ceed or fail is a consideration totally

VOL. LX. NO. CCCLX.

The Isthmus of Suez Question.

771

irrelevant ; except thus far, that if
it is sure to fail, there is in our
resistance to it the same immorality,
and an additional amount of folly ;
since, on that supposition, we are
parading to the world a belief that
our interest is inconsistent with its
good, while if the failure of the
project would really be any benefit
to us, we are certain of obtaining
that benefit by merely holding our
peace.

As a matter of private opinion,
the present writer, so far as i. has
looked into the evidence, inclines to
agree with those who think that the
scheme cannot be executed, at least
by the means and with the funds
proposed. But this is a considera-
tion for the shareholders. The
British Government does not deem
it any part of its business to prevent
individuals, even British citizens,
from wasting their own money in
unsuccessful speculations, though
holding out no prospect of great
public usefulness in the event of
success. And if, though at the cost
of their own property, they acted as
pioneers to others, and the scheme,
though a losing one to those who
first undertook it, should, in the
same or in other hands, realize the
full expected amount of ultimate
benefit to the world at large, it
would not be the first nor the
hundredth time that an unprofitable
enterprise has had this for its final
result.

There seems to be no little need
that the whole doctrine of non-
interference with foreign nations
should be reconsidered, if it can be
said to have as yet been considered
as a really moral question at all.
We have heard something lately
about being willing to go to war for
an idea. ‘To go to war for an idea,
if the war is aggressive, not defen-
sive, is as criminal as to go to war
for territory or revenue; for it is
as little justifiable to force ourideas
on other people, as to compel them
to submit to our will in any other
respect. But there assuredly are
cases in which it is allowable to go
to war, without having been our-
selves attacked, or threatened with
attack; and it is very important
that nations should make up their
minds in time, as to what these

3E

772

cases are. There are few questions
which more require to be taken in
hand by ethical and political philo-
sophers, with a view to establish
some rule or criterion whereby the
justifiableness of intervening in the
affairs of other countries, and (what
is sometimes fully as questionable)
the justifiableness of refraining
from intervention, may be brought
to a definite and rational test. Who-
ever attempts this, will be led to
recognise more than one fundamen-
tal distinction, not yet by any
means familiar to the public mind,
and in general quite lost sight of by
those who write in strains of indig-
nant morality on the subject.
There isa great difference (for ex-
ample) between the case in which
the nations concerned are of the
same, or something like the same,
degree of civilization, and that in
which one of the parties to the
situation is of a high, and the other
of a very low, grade of social im-
provement. To suppose that the
same international customs, and the
same rules of international morality,
can obtain between one civilized
nation and another, and between
civilized nations and barbarians, is
a grave error, and one which no
statesman can fall into, however it
may be with those who, from a safe
and unresponsible position, criticise
statesmen. Among many reasons
why the same rules cannot be
applicable to situations so dif-
ferent, the two following are among
the most important. In the first
place, the rules of ordinary in-
ternational morality imply recipro-
city. But barbarians will not reci-
procate. They cannot be depended
on for observing any rules. Their
minds are not capable of so great
an effort, nor their will sufficiently
under the influence of distant mo-
tives. In the next place, nations
which are still barbarous have not
got beyond the period during which
it is hkely to be for their benefit
that they should be conquered and
held in subjection by foreigners.
Independence and nationality, so
essential to the due growth and de-
velopment of a people further ad-
vanced in improvement, are gene-
rally impediments to theirs. The

sacred duties which civilized nations
owe to the independence and nation-

A Few Words on Non-Intervention.

[December,

ality of each other, are not binding
towards those to whom nationality
and independence are either a cer-
tain evil, or at best a questionable
good. The Romans were not the
most clean-handed of conquerors,
yet would it have been better for
Gaul and Spain, Numidia and
Dacia, never to have formed part of
the Roman Empire? To charac-
terize any conduct whatever to-
wards a barbarous people as a vio-
lation of the law of nations, only
shows that he who so speaks has
never considered the subject. A
violation of great principles of mo-
rality it may easily be; but barbarians
have no rights as a nation, except a
right to such treatment as may, at
the earliest possible period, fit them
for becoming one. The only moral
laws for the relation between a civi-
lized and a barbarous government,
are the universal rules of morality
between man and man.

The criticisms, therefore, which
are so often made upon the conduct
of the French in Algeria, or of the
English in India, proceed, it would
seem, mostly on a wrong principle.
The true standard by which to
judge their proceedingsnever having

een laid down, they escape such
comment and censure as might
really have an improving effect,
while they are tried by a standard
which can have no influence on those
practically engaged in such trans-
actions, knowing as they do that it
cannot, and if it could, ought not to
be observed, because no human
being would be the better, and many
much the worse, for its observance.
A civilized government cannot help
having barbarous neighbours: when
it has, it cannot always content
itself with a defensive position, one
of mere resistance to aggression.
After a longer or shorter interval of
forbearance, it either finds itself ob-
liged to conquer them, or to assert
so much authority over them, and
so break their spirit, that they gra-
dually sink into a state of depen-
dence upon itself: and when that
time arrives, they are indeed no
longer formidable to it, but it has
had so much to do with setting up
and pulling down their govern-
ments, and they have grown 80 ac-
customed to lean on it, that it has
become morally responsible for all

1859.]

evil it allows them todo. This is
the history of the relations of the
British Government with the native
States of India. It never was se-
cure in its own Indian possessions
until it had reduced the military
— of those States to a nullity.

ut a despotic government only
exists by its military power. Wher
we had taken away theirs, we were
forced, by the necessity of the case,
to offer them ours instead of it. To
enable them to dispense with large
armies of their own, we bound
ourselves to place at their disposal,
and they bound themselves to re-
ceive, such an amount of military
force as made us in fact masters of
the country. We engaged that this
force should fulfil the purposes of a
force, by defending the prince
against all foreign and internal
enemies. But being thus assured
of the protection of a civilized

ower, and freed from the fear of
internal rebellion or foreign con-
quest, the only checks which either
restrain the passions or keep any
vigour in the character of an Asiatic
despot, the native Governments
either became so oppressive and
extortionate as to desolate the coun-
try, or fell into such a state of
nerveless imbecility, that every one,
subject to their will, who had not
the means of defending himself by
his own armed followers, was the
prey of anybody who had a band of
ruffians in his pay. The British
Government felt this deplorable
state of things to be its own work;
being the direct consequence of the
position in which, for its own secu-
rity, it had placed itself towards the
native governments. Had it per-
mitted this to go on indefinitely, it
would have deserved to be accounted
among the worst political male-
factors. In some cases (unhap-
pily not in all) it had endeavoured
to take precaution against these
mischiefs by a special article in
the treaty, binding the prince to
reform his administration, and in
future to govern in conformity to
the advice of the British Govern-
ment. Among the treaties in which
a provision of this sort had been
inserted, was that with Oude. For
fifty years and more did the British
Government allow this engagement
to be treated with entire disregard ;

British Relations with Native Indian States.

773

not without frequent remonstrances,
and occasionally threats, but without
ever carrying into effect what it
threatened. During this period of
half a century, England was morally
accountable for a mixture of tyranny
and anarchy, the picture of which, by
men who knew it well, is appalling
toall whoreadit. The act by which
the Government of British India
at last set aside treaties which had
been so pertinaciously violated, and
assumed the power of fulfilling the
obligation it had so long before in-
curred, of giving to the people of
Oude a tolerable government, far
from being the political crime it is
so often ignorantly called, was a
criminally tardy edness of an
imperative duty. And the fact,
that nothing which had been done
in all this century by the East
India Company’s Government made
it so unpopular in England, is one
of the most striking instances of
what was noticed in a former part
of this article—the predisposition of
English public opinion to look un-
favourably upon every act by which
territory or revenues are acquired
from foreign States, and to take part
with any government, however un-
worthy, which can make out the
merest semblance of a case of in-
justice against our own country.
But among civilized peoples,
members of an equal community of
nations, like Christian Europe, the
question assumes another aspect,
and must be decided on totally dif-
ferent principles. It would be an
affront to the reader to discuss the
immorality of wars of conquest, or of
conquest even as the consequence of
lawful war ; the annexation of any
civilized people to the dominion of
another, unless by their own spon-
taneous election. Up to this point,
there is no difference of opinion
among honest people; nor on the
wickedness of commencing an ag-
gressive war for any interest of our
own, except when necessary to avert
from ourselves an obviously im-
pending wrong. The disputed ques-
tion is that of interfering in the
regulation of another country’s in-
ternal concerns; the question whe-
ther a nation is justified in taking
part, on either side, in the civil wars
or party contests of another; and
chiefly, whether it may justifiably
3E2

774

aid the people of another country in
struggling for liberty ; or may impose
on a country any particular govern-
ment or institutions, either as being
best for the country itself, or as
necessary for the security of its
neighbours.

Of these cases, that of a people in
arms for liberty is the only one of
any nicety, or which, theoretically
at least, is likely to present conflict-
ing moral considerations. The other
cases which have been mentioned
hardly admit of discussion. Assist-
ance to the government of a country
in keeping down the people, unhap-
pily by far the most frequent case
of foreign intervention, no one
writing in a free country needs take
the trouble of stigmatizing. A
government which needs foreign
support to enforce obedience from
its own citizens, is one which ought
not to exist; and the assistance
given to it by foreigners is hardly
ever anything but the sympathy of
one despotism with another. A
case requiring consideration is that
of a protracted civil war, in which
the contending parties are so equally
balanced that there is no probability
of a speedy issue ; or if ee is, the
victorious side cannot hope to keep
down the vanquished but by severi-
ties repugnant to humanity and in-
jurious to the permanent welfare of
the country.
case it seems now to be an admitted
doctrine, that the neighbouring na-
tions, or one powerful neighbour
with the acquiescence of the rest,
are warranted in demanding that
the contest shall cease, and a recon-
ciliation take place on equitable
terms of compromise. Intervention
of this description has been repeat-
edly practised during the present
generation, with such general ap-
proval, that its legitimacy may be
considered to have passed into a
maxim of what is called international
law. The interference of the Euro-

ean Powers between Greece and
Turkey, and between Turkey and
Egypt, were cases in point. That
between Holland and Belgium was
still more so. The intervention of
England in Portugal, a few years
ago, which is probably less remem-
bered than the others, because it
took effect without the employment
of actual force, belongs to the same

A Few Words on Non-Intervention.

In this exceptional -

[ December,

category. At the time, this inter-
osition had the appearance of a
bad and dishonest Geokiow of the
government against the people,
being so timed as to hit the exact
moment when the popular party had
obtained a marked advantage, and
seemed on the eve of overthrowing
the government, or reducing it to
terms. But if ever a political act
which looked ill in the commence-
ment could be justified by the event,
this was; for, as the fact turned
out, instead of giving ascendancy to
a party, it proved a really healing
measure; and the chiefs of the so-
called rebellion were, within a few
years, the honoured and successful
ministers of the throne against
which they had so lately fought.
With respect to the question,
whether one country is justified in
helping the people of another in a
struggle against their government
for free institutions, the answer will
be different, according as the yoke
which the people are attempting to
throw off is that of a purely native
government, or of foreigners; con-
sidering as one of foreigners, every
government which maintains itself
by foreign support. When the con-
test is only with native rulers, and
with such native strength as those
rulers can enlist in their defence,
the answer I should give to the
question of the legitimacy of inter-
vention is, as a general rule, No.
The reason is, that there can seldom
be anything approaching to assur-
ance that intervention, even if suc-
cessful, would be for the good of the
people themselves. The only teat
possessing any real value, of a peo-
ple’s having become fit for popular
institutions, is that they, or a suffi-
cient portion of them to prevail in
the contest, are willing to brave
labour and danger for their libera-
tion. I know all that may be said.
I know it may be urged that the
virtues of freemen cannot be learnt
in the school of slavery, and that if
a people are not fit for freedom,
to have any chance of becoming
so they must first be free. And
this would be conclusive, if the
intervention recommended would
really give them freedom. But the
evil is, that if they have not sufli-
cient love of liberty to be able to
wrest it from merely domestic

1859.]

oppressors, the liberty which is
bestowed on them by other hands
than their own will have nothing
real,nothing permanent. No people
ever was and remained free, but
because it was determined to be so;
because neither its rulers nor any
other party in the nation could com-
pel it to be otherwise. If a people
—especially one whose freedom
has not yet become prescriptive—
does not value it sufficiently to fight
for it, and maintain it against any
force which can be mustered within
the country, even by those who have
the command of the public revenue,
it is only a question in how few
years or months that people will be
enslaved. Either the government
which it has given to itself, or some
mnilitary a or knot of con-
spunea who contrive to subvert
the government, will speedily put
an end to all popular institutions :
unless indeed it suits their conve-
nience better to leave them stand-
ing, and be content with reducing
them to mere forms; for, unless the
spirit of liberty is strong ina people,
those who have the executive in
their hands easily work any insti-
tutions to the purposes of despotism.
There is no sure guarantee against
this deplorable issue, even in a coun-
try which has achieved its own
freedom; as may be seen in the

resent day by striking examples

oth in the Old and New Worlds:
but when freedom has been achieved
for them, they have little prospect
indeed of escaping this fate. When
a people has had the misfortune to
be ruled by a government under
which the feelings and the virtues
needful for maintaining freedom
could not develope themselves, it is
during an arduous struggle to be-
come free by their own efforts that
these feelings and virtues have the
best chance of springing up. Men
become attached to that which they
have long fought for and made
sacrifices for; they learn to appre-
ciate that on which their thoughts
have been much engaged; and a
contest in which many have been
called on to devote themselves for
their country, is a school in which
they learn to value their country’s
interest above their own.

It can seldom, therefore—I will
not go so far as to say never—be

How one free Government may assist another.

775

either judicious or right, in a country
which has a free government, to
assist, otherwise than by the moral
support of its opinion, the endea-
vours of another to extort the same
blessing from its native rulers. We
must except, of course, any case in
which such assistance is a measure of
legitimate self-defence. If (a con-
tingency by no means unlikely to
occur) this country, on account of
its freedom, which is a standing
reproach to despotism everywhere,
and an encouragement to throw it
off, should find itself menaced with
attack by a coalition of Continental
despots, it ought to consider the
popular party in every nation of the
Continent as its natural ally: the
Liberals should be to it, what the
Protestants of Europe were to the
Government of Queen Elizabeth.
So, again, when a nation, in her
own defence, has gone to war with
a despot, and has had the rare good
fortune not only to succeed in her
resistance, but to hold the condi-
tions of peace in her own hands,
she is entitled to say that she will
make no treaty, unless with some
other ruler than the one whose
existence as such may be a per-
petual menace to her safety and
freedom. These exceptions do but
set in a clearer light the reasons
of the rule; because they do not
depend on any failure of those
reasons, but on considerations para-
mount to them, and coming under
a different principle.

But the case of a people struggling
against a foreign yoke, or against a
native tyranny upheld by foreign
arms, illustrates the reasons for
non-intervention in an opposite way,
for in this case the reasons them-
selves do not exist. A people the
most attached to freedom, the most
capable of defending and of making
a good use of free institutions, may
be unable to contend successfully
for them against the military
strength of another nation much
more powerful. To assist a people
thus kept down, is not to disturb
the balance of forees on which the
permanent maintenance of freedom
in a country depends, but to redress
that balance when it is already un-
fairly and violently disturbed. The
doctrine of non-intervention, to be
a legitimate principle of morality,

776

must be accepted by all govern-
ments. The ioegens must consent
to be bound by it as well as the
free States. Unless they do, the
profession of it by free countries
comes but to this miserable issue,
that the wrong side may help the
wrong, but the right must not help
the right. Intervention to enforce
non-intervention is always rightful,
always moral, if not always prudent.
Though it be a mistake to give free-
dom to a people who do not value
the boon, it cannot but be right to
insist that if they do value it, they
shall not be hindered from the
pursuit of it by foreign coercion.
it might not have been right for
England (even apart from the
question of prudence) to have taken
part with lenaeey in its noble
struggle against Austria; although
the Austrian Government in
Hungary was in some sense a
foreign yoke. But when, the
Hungarians having shown them-
selves likely to prevail in this strug-
gle, the Russian despot interposed,
and joining his force to that of
Austria, delivered back the Hun-
garians, bound hand and foot, to
their exasperated oppressors, it
would have been an honourable and
virtuous act on the part of England
to have declared that this should
not be, and that if Russia gave as-
sistance to the wrong side, England
would aid the right. It might not
have been consistent with the re-
gard which every nation is bound

A Few Words on Non-Intervention.

[ December, 1859.

to pay to its own safety, for
England to have taken up this posi-
tion single-handed, But England
and France together could have
done it; and if they had, the
Russian armed intervention would
never have taken place, or would
have been disastrous to Russia
alone: while all that those Powers
gained by not doing it, was that
they had to fight Russia five
years afterwards, under more diffi-
cult circumstances, and without
Hungary for anally. The first na-
tion which, being powerful enough
to make its voice effectual, has the
spirit and courage to say that not a
gun shall be fired in Europe by the
soldiers of one Power against the
revolted subjects of another, will
be the idol of the friends of freedom
throughout Europe. That declara-
tion alone will ensure the almost
immediate emancipation of every
people which desires liberty suff-
ciently to be capable of maintaining
it: and the nation which gives the
word will soon find itself at the
head of an alliance of free peoples,
so strong as to defy the efforts of
any number of confederated despots
to bring it down. The prize is too
glorious not to be snatched sooner
or later by some free country ; and
the time may not be distant when
England, if she does not take this
heroic part because of its heroism,
will be compelled to take it from
consideration for her own safety.
Jonny Strvart Mitt.

INDEX

VOLUME

Abbey of Port Royal—history of, 485 ;
destruction of, 497

About the West Riding, 449

Administration, the New, 122

Adventures of Madame d'Estrées,
48

Alison’s History of Europe from 1815 to
1852, 211, 603

Alpine Club, the, 239

Alpine Excursions, dangers of, 241

Alpine Literature, 232

Amnesty, the, between France and
Austria, 250

Ancient sea margins, 130

Ararat, Mount, a Visit to, 111

Arethusa, the Legend of: To the Right
Honourable Arethusa M— G—, 243

Autocracy and Democracy, identity of,
640

Bacon’s Philosophical Works, 387

Bakers and Builders, by a Grumbler,
480

Barons of Buchan, the: a contribution
to local history, 127

Books of Travel, 105

Brain, disturbances of the, through
bodily disease, 629

British and French Naval Administra-
tions, 648

Brunel, Isambard Kingdom: In Me-
moriam, 620

Buchan, the Barons of: a contribution
to local history, 127

Buckle’s, Mr., History of Civilization,
some Remarks on, by Dr. Mayo, 293

Bunsen’s, Baron, Egypt's Place in Uni-
versal History, 42

Cairnes, J. E. : Essay towards an Ex-
perimental Solution of the Gold
Question, 267

Canning, George, and his Times, Staple-
ton’s, 513

Character of Victor Emmanuel, 505

Chaucer, Cardinal Wiseman’s charge
against, 749

Chorley, J. R. : Notes on the National
Drama of Spain :—Chap. II., Out-
lines, 49; Chap. III., Principles, 314,

423
Chronology, Egyptian and Sacred, 42
Cole’s Life and Theatrical Times of
Charles Kean, 361

TO

L X.

Comyns, Rise of the, 133; their politi-
cal position, ib. ; their fall, 136; their
traditional character, 137

Concerning Friends in Council, 344

Concerning Hurry and Leisure, 145

De Boismont, A. Brierre, On Halluci-
nations, 625

Democracy and Autocracy, identity of,
640

Democratic Tyranny—Risks of Eng-
land, 637

D’ Estrées,
48

Destruction of the
Royal, 497

Drama, National, of Spain, Notes on
the, by J. R. Chorley :—Chap. II.,
Outlines, 49; Chap. III., Principles,
314, 423

Earthquakes, by C. R. Weld, 708

Egyptian and Sacred Chronology, 42

Egypt's Place in Universal History,
Baron Bunsen’s, 42

England, Risks of—Democratic tyran-
ny, 637

England’s Literary Debt to Italy, by
J. Montgomery Stuart, 697

English Literature, Modern, Thoughts
on, 97

English Poetry versus Cardinal Wise-
man, by Leigh Hunt, 747

Essay towards an Experimental Solu-
tion of the Gold Question, by J. E.
Cairnes, 267

Europe, History of, from 1815 to 1852,
Alison’s, 211, 603

European Wars, 74

Madame, Adventures of,

Abbey of Port

Finance, Indian, 534

‘jeld, a Journey across the, 186

Fortifications, the state of our, 656

France and Austria, the Amnesty
between, 250

French Wars, Modern, 71

Friends in Council, New Series, 344

Garibaldi, a Song from, 95

Genealogies, the, of our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ, Lord Arthur
Hervey’s, 42

German Contributions towards , Pro-
gress, 633

Gold Question, Essay towards an Ex-
perimental Solution of the, by J. E.
Cairnes, 267

Goodwin’s Hieratic Papyri, 42

Grossi’s ‘ Nelda,’ translated, 668

Hallucinations, 625

Has Political Freedom receded? 631

Hays, the—their property in Buchan, 139

Hervey, Lord Arthur: Zhe Genealogies
of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
42

Hieratic Papyri, Goodwin's, 42

History of Civilization, Mr. Buckle’s,
Some Remarks on, by Dr. Mayo, 293

History of Europe from 1815 to 1852,
Alison’s, 211, 603

Holmby House, a Tale of Old Northamp-
tonshire, by G. J. Whyte Melville,
24, 167, 279, 434, 544, 084

Humboldt, Alexander von: In Memo-
riam, 15

Hunt, Leigh, English Poetry versus
Cardinal Wiseman, 747

Hunt's Manual of the Philosophy of
Voice and Speech, 1

Hurry and Leisure, Concerning, 145

Identity of Autocracy and Democracy,
640

Idylls of the King, Alfred Tennyson’s,
301

Illusions and Delusions, 625

Indian Finance, 534

Irrationale, the, of Speech, by a Minute
Philosopher, 1

Italian Confederation, the proposed,
246; and the Duchies, 511

Italy, England's Literary Debt to, by
J. Montgomery Stuart, 697

Italy, invasion of, by Charles VIII.,
78 ; by Louis XII., 76; by Francis I.,
7

Italy, the present State of, see Naples,
France, and Austria, 373 ; Piedmont
and Italy in 1849 and 1859, 498

Jesuits, intrigues of the, for the destruc-
tion of the Monastery of Port Royal,
493 f

Journey, a, across the Fjeld, 186

Kean, Charles, Life and Theatrical
Times of, Cole's, 361

Keats, Cardinal Wiseman’s
against, 765

Keightley, Thomas, on the Life of
Edmund Spenser, 410

Kennedy's, Gen. Shaw, Plan of Defence,
651

Lady of Lee, the, 372

Last Spring at Rome—a Bird's-eye
View, 467

Legend, the, of Arethusa; 243

Life and Theatrical Times of Charles
Kean, Cole's, 361

Life of Edmund Spenser, on the, by

Thomas Keightley, 410

charge

Index to Vol. LX.

Limits of Religious Thought examined,
Mansel’s, 563

Lombardy, cession of, to Sardinia, 249

Lombardy, invasion of, by Louis XII.,
76; by Francis I., 78

London, the question of fortifying, 637;
opinions of Pitt and of Napoleon, 658

Longueville, Madame, and Port Royal,

495
Long Vacation Readings, 672
Luther’s Domestic Circle, 678

Machiavelli and his Prince explained
and illustrated, 254; Machiavelli on
mercenary troops and cruelty, 255 ;
his maxims, 256; his object in writing
The Prince, 257; intellectual restraint,
1460-1660, 259; Machiavelli’s philo-
sophy, 260; geueral practice of
Machiavellian doctrines, 261; Napo-
leon’s invasion of Egypt, ib. ; ‘the
Spanish War,’ 263; Louis Philippe’s
seizure of Ancona, 264; Machiavelli
a type of politicians, 266

Mansel and Maurice—Religious and
Philosophical Guides, 563

Maubuisson, reform of the Abbey of, 487

Maurice's What is Revelation? &c.,
563

Mayo, Dr.: Some Remarks on Mr.
Buckle’s History of Civilization, 293

Mazzinianism, rise and fall of, 502

Melville, G. J. Whyte : Holmby House,
a Tale of Old Northamptonshire, 24,
167, 279, 434, 544, 684

Militia, the, 653 ‘

Mill, John Stuart: A Few Words on
Non-intervention, 766

Modern English Literature, Thoughts
on, 97

Modern French Wars, 71

Monastery of Port Royal des Champs,
482; history of the Abbey, 485

Monte Rosa, Tour round, 234

Morocco, Some Account of, 720

Much Ado about Nothing, 361

Naples, France, and Austria, 373;
Neapolitan misgovernment, 374; so-
cial intercourse at Naples, 377; the
Liberal party in Naples, ib. ; King
Francis II., 379; prospects of Sicily,
380; the effects of the late war, 382 ;
what will the Emperor Napoleon do ¢
383; duty of England, 384; forma-
tion of a great Italian Power, 385;
fitness of Neapolitans for constitu-
tional liberty, 386

Naples, invasion of, by Charles VIII.,

Na alia on the defence of the capital,
58
Napoleon the Liberator, 624
Napoleon IIT., conduct of, in Italy, 510
National Defences, the, 643 ; alterations
caused by the introduction of steam,
644; naval warfare in a transitional

state, 646; practicability of the pas-
sage and of landing, 647; British and
French naval administrations, 648 ;
question of manning the navy, 649;
Volunteer Naval Reserve, 650; Gen.
Shaw Kennedy’s Plan of Defence,
651; condition of the soldier, 652 ,
the militia, 653; the volunteer move-
ment, 654; the state of our fortifica-
tions, 656 ; the question of fortifying
London, 657; opinions of Pitt and of
Napoleon on the defence of the capital,
658

Nella: a Romance—translated from
Grossi, 668

New Administration, the, 122

Non-intervention, a Few Words on, by
John Stuart Mill, 766

Notes on the National Drama of Spain,
by J. R. Chorley :—Chap. II., Out-
lines, 49; Chap. III., Principles, 314,
423

Old Northamptonshire, a Tale of:
Holmby House, by G. J. Whyte
Melville, 24, 167, 279, 434, 544, 684

Olive Wood, Sketches framed in, 579

Peace of Villafranca, the, 244

Piedmont and Italy in 1849 and 1859,
498

Pitt and Canning — Fifty Years of
Political History, 513; LordChatham,
ib. ; character of Charles James Fox,
515; Fox as a leader, 516; Burke
and Fox, 517; opposition of North
and Fox, 518; Pitt’s policy, 519;
close of the career of Pitt and Fox,
521; Canning’s early associations,
522; Canning in the House of Com-
mons, 523; his foreign policy, 525 ;
the Portland Administration—capture
of the Danish fleet, 526; Lord
Castlereagh and the Holy Alliance,
527; the Congress of Verona, 528;
Canuing’s Portuguese policy, 529;
how Canning treated the Holy
Alliance, 531; last months of Can-
ning’s life, 532

Pitt and Napoleon on the defence of the
capital, 658

Poetry :—A Song from Garibaldi, 95;
A Bunch of Song-Flowers, by Alex-
ander Smith—I., Blaavin; II., The
Well; III., Return; IV., Blaavin,
163; The Legend of Arethusa: To
the Right Honourable Arethusa
M G—, 243; The Lady of
Lee, 372; The Volunteer at Solferino,
466; Napoleon the Liberator, 624 ;
Nelda: a Romance—translated from
Grossi, 668

Politics :—The New Administration,
122; The Peace of Villafranca, 244;
Naples, France, and Austria, 373;
Piedmont and Italy in 1849 and 1859,

498

Index to Vol. LX. 779

Port Royal and the Port Royalists, 482

Religious and Philosophical Guides—
Mansel and Maurice, 563

Remarks, Some, on Mr. Buckle’s
History of Civilization, by Dr. Mayo,

293

Republic, the, the Consulate, and the
Empire, ‘ glories’ of, 80

Reserved People, Thoughts on, by a
Candid Man, 22

Reviews :—The Unspeakable, or the Life
and Adventures of a Stammerer, 1;
Hunt's Manual of the Philosophy of
Speech and. Voice, ib. ; Baron Bunsen’s
Egypt's Plucein Universal History, 42 ;
Lord Arthur Hervey’s The Genealo-
gies of our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ, ib.; Goodwin’s Hieratic Pa-
pyri, ib.; Alison's History of Europe
from the Fall of Napoleon, in 1815,
to the Accession of Louis Napoleon,
1852, 211,603; A Lady's Tour round
Monte Rosa, 233; King’s Italian
Valleys of the Pennine Alps, 236;
Forbes’s Tour of Mont Blane and
Monte Rosa, ib.; Wills’s Wanderings
among the High Alps, 238; Hinch-
liff's Summer Months among the
Alps, with the Ascent of Monte Rosa,
ib.; Ball's Peaks, Passes, and Gla-
ciers, a Series of Excursions by Mem-
bers of the Alpine Club, 239; Alfred
Tennyson's Jdylls of the King, 301;
Friends in Council, New Series,
344; Cole’s Life and Theatrical
Times of Charles Kean, 361; The
Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of
Verulam, &c., collected by James
Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and
Douglas Denon Heath, Vols. I.—V.,
387 ; Schimmelpenninck’s Select Me-
moirs of Port Royal, 482; Stapleton’s
George Canning and. his Times, 513;
Mansel’s Limits of Religious Thought
Examined, 563; Maurice’s What is
Revelation? &c., ib.; Chretien’s Let-
ter to Rev. F. D. Maurice, ib. ; Brierre
de Boismont, On Hallucinations, 625 ;

Tulloch’s Leaders of the Reformation,
77

a of England—Democratic tyranny,
937

Rome, Last Spring at—a Bird's-eye
View, 467

Sand storms, 131

Sardinia, cession of Lombardy to, 249

Schimmelpenninck’s Select Memoirs of
Port Royal, 482

Sea coast, natural history of, 140

Sea-side, a stormy day at the, 683

Sketches framed in Olive Wood, 579

Smiles, Samuel : Robert Stephenson, In
Memoriam, 661

Smith, Alexander, A Bunch of Song
Flowers, 163

780

Solferino, the Volunteer at, 466

Some Account of Morocco, 720

Song-Flowers, a Bunch of, by Alexan-
der Smith, 163

Song from Garibaldi, a, 95

Spain, National Drama of, Notes on
the, by J. R. Chorley :—Chap. IL.,
Outlines, 49; Chap. III., Principles,
314, 423

Speech, the Irrationale of, by a Minute
Philosopher, 1

Spenser, Cardinal Wiseman’s charge
against, 753

Spenser, Edmund, on the Life of, by
Thomas Keightley, 410; Spenser's
family, 411; evidence of Spenser's
residence in the north, 413; who was
Rosalind? 413; Shepherd’s Calendar
—Faerie Queen, 414; Spenser in Ire-
land, 415; his Irish offices, 417;
Kilcolman, 418; Spenser's courtship
and marriage, 419; his family and
misfortunes, 421; his pecuniary cir-
cumstances, 422

Stapleton, A. G.: George Canning and
his Times, 513

Stephen, Sir James, K.C.B., LL.D. :
In Memoriam, 560

Stephenson, Robert:
661

Stuart, J. Montgomery :
Literary Debt to Italy, 697

Suez, the Isthmus of, question respect-
ing, 770

Sword and Gown, by the Author of
Guy Livingstone, 81, 199, 330, 471,
59!

In Memoriam,

England’s

Tales and Narratives :—Holmby House ;
a Tale of Old Northamptonshire, by
G. J. Whyte Melville.—Chap. XTX.,
‘The News that flies apace,’ 24 ; Chap.
XX., The Man of Destiny, 28 ; Chap.
XXI., ‘ Under Sentence,’ 34; Chap.
XXII., ‘Father and Child,’ 38;
Chap. XXIII. , ‘TheTrue Despotism,’
167; Chap. XXIV., ‘ Farewell,’ 171;
Chap. XXV., Naseby Field, 177;
Chap. XXVI., ‘The Wheel goes
round,’ 279; Chap. XX VII., Holmby
House, 285; Chap. XX VIII., Keep-
ing Secrets, 434; Chap. XXIX.,
‘The Falcon Gentle,’ 443; Chap.
XXX., ‘A Ride across a Country,’
544; Chap. XXXI., ‘ Forthe King !’
551; Chap. XXXII., ‘The Begin-
ning of the End,’ 555; Chap,

XXXIII., ‘The Beacon afar,’ 684 ;

Index to Vol. LX.

Chap. XXXIV., ‘Past and Gone,’
689; Chap. XXXV., ‘The Landing-
net,’ 693. Sword and Gown, by
the Author of Guy Livingstone, 81,
199, 330, 471, 591.—A Visit to
Mount Ararat, 4111.—A Journey
across the Fjeld, 186, — Last
Spring at Rome—a Bird’s-eye View,
467. — Sketches framed in Olive
Wood, 579. — The Victoria Cross,

739
Tennyson’s, Alfred, Idylls of the King,

301
Thoughts on Modern English Literature,

97

Thoughts on Reserved People, by a
Candid Man, 227

Tour round Monte Rosa, 234

Travel, Books of, 105

Tulloch’s Leaders of the Reformation,
4a

Tyranny, Democratic—risks of Eng-
land, 637

Unspeakable, the; or, the Life and Ad-
ventures of a Stammerer, 1

Victor Emmanuel, character of, 505

Victoria Cross, the, 739

Villafranca, the Peace of, 244; motives
and objects of the late war, 245; the
proposed Italian Confederation, 246;
the cession of Lombardy to Sardinia,
249; the amnesty, 250; duty of Eng-
land, 252

Voice and Speech, Manual of the Phi-
losophy of, Hunt's, 1

Volunteer, the, at Solferino, 466

Volunteer Movement, 654

Volunteer Naval Reserve, 650

Von Humboldt, Alexander: In Memo-
riam, 15

War in general, on, and modern French
wars in particular, 71; moral in-
fluence of wars, 72; European wars,
74; invasion of Italy by Charle:
VIII., 75; invasion of Lombardy by
Louis XI1., 76; Battle of Ravenna,
77; Francis I. in Italy, 78; French
wars without profit to the nation, ib. ;
reign of Louis XIV., 79; the ‘glories’
of the Republic, the Consulate, and
the Empire, 80

Weld, C. R.: Earthquakes, 708

West Riding, About the, 449

What is Revelation? &c., Maurice's, 563

Wiseman, Cardinal, English Poetry
versus, by Leigh Hunt, 747

END OF VOL. LX.